Forecasting New Product Awareness in Simulated Test Marketing : The Approach for Emerging Markets

Simulated test marketing (STM) is a quantitative technique used to forecast new product sales, one of the most validated tools in all marketing research. Forecasting awareness is an important stage in that process, one critical to STM performance. Awareness models incorporated into popular STMs are often built around Western market norms, which are not directly transferable to many developing markets. This paper explores this issue in detail, providing some empirical evidence from Russia. Next, it examines various approaches to awareness modeling and confirms the practical utility of econometric techniques by applying them to a dataset consisting of more than 2,500 observations. Finally, this paper also suggests a “seven steps” framework for successful adapting existing awareness models to new market conditions