To understand people’s preference to price points and to predict sales, the new NPD service using point-of-sale information from more than 700 retailers.

NPD data shows what people bought, the price they paid for those products, and a variety of other attributes. It then uses data analysis to determine the value in dollars of the individual features of those products.

Dr. George Terhanian, president of solutions for NPD, said: “People who participate in research are not always great at rating or rank ordering product features, let alone predicting their own future behaviour. Within an in-depth interview or survey, for instance, someone may say that the brand of a laptop is only a moderately important consideration when they think about buying a computer.  At checkout, it may turn out that brand trumps all other features.”

All product feature evaluation subscribers – manufacturers and retailers – will be able to test hypotheses, conduct what if analyses, and obtain answers to questions through an interactive simulation system that NPD updates as new features enter the market.