In a changing environment where over 90% of new products are failing, one of the most important questions keeping CEOs up at night is this: “Is my product good enough?”

One of the biggest differences between success and failure lies in how a product’s performance stacks up against the category and its competition. Critical insights are needed to provide confidence in product and packaging performance, leading to clear directions for improvements in the product design. This is something that only a company with a deep history of product performance testing and historical data can provide.

With over 45 years of experience, Curion is a full-service product and packaging consumer insights firm spanning a wide range of categories and industries, including food and beverage, health and beauty, durables, and beyond. Curion works with world-class industry leaders to turn disparate data into an asset for their clients.

Recently, Curion launched Curion Score™, a product benchmarking tool that allows brands to compare their product and packaging to more than 500 million data points within Curion’s deep proprietary insights database.

The Curion Score™ holistically captures product performance and readiness for the market by gauging how it measures up to the competition across categories. Previously, understanding how product and packaging performance compares to the category was nearly impossible prior to launch and resulted in little to no differentiation to confidently make decisions. Utilizing Curion’s new tool, brands can benchmark within their category before their product hits the market, optimize their product and packaging to ensure market success, and launch with confidence.

Close collaboration between leaders within Curion and experts in the Product Research and Consumer Insights industry originally gave birth to the Curion Score™ and later provided statistical validation for the accuracy of this tool. At present, the Curion Score™ has a robust client panel and advisory board. Highly ranked representatives from Fortune 500 companies are currently engaged within this team, and academic scholars including Helene Hopfer, PhD, Penn State University, and Jacob Lahne, PhD, Virginia Tech University, brought perspective into the statistical models, algorithm, and technology development behind the Curion Score™ tool.

Mars Wrigley was the first client to leverage the Curion Score™ and benefit from comprehensive product, packaging and category understanding prior to launch. The large confectionery company wanted to know if a product extension was ready to go to market, or if more research and optimizations were needed. Curion’s tool provided succinct and accurate product benchmarking technology that gave Mars Wrigley the information needed to confidently make the right decision. Since its launch, hordes of Fortune 500 clients have been requesting the Curion Score™ tool for products prior to launch.

Product and packaging strategies need validation and confidence prior to launch to ensure success and that consumer benefits are met. These can include ease-of-use, e-commerce friendly packaging, clear and transparent product messaging, packaging safety, environmentally friendly packaging, and more. With the Curion Score™, brands can launch products with confidence and avoid hundreds of hours of additional research, improving on productivity to ensure core company goals are met.