Usage and Attitude Testing: Benefits, Pitfalls & Top Providers

When companies try to understand their customers, they often start with assumptions about who the target audience is, what they care about, and what they buy. But those assumptions are often incomplete or wrong.

Usage and attitude (U&A) testing is designed to solve that problem. It gives you a complete view of how people actually behave in a category, how they think about it, and where opportunities exist to innovate.

These studies are often large in scope and highly detailed, covering everything from purchase habits to brand perceptions and unmet needs. The goal is to understand the full landscape before making decisions that shape your product development, positioning, or strategy.

At Pollfish and through our parent company Prodege, we’ve helped organizations from a wide range of industries run U&A studies, including some entering a new category for the first time and others that have been operating for decades but want to uncover opportunities they may be missing.

In this guide, we cover:

• What usage and attitude testing is
• Key benefits and what it helps uncover
• Common mistakes to avoid in usage and attitude testing
• Prodege’s full-service U&A research offering
• Benefits of following up usage and attitude surveys with Pollfish’s DIY survey tool

Note: Schedule a call to learn about Prodege’s full-service usage and attitude testing offering. If you prefer a DIY approach, sign up for a free Pollfish account (no credit card required).

What Is Usage and Attitude Testing?

Usage and Attitude (U&A) research is a type of foundational study designed to map out an entire category, including how people engage with it, what matters to them, and where gaps exist.

Because categories shift over time, many organizations run U&A studies on a recurring basis (typically every few years) to track changes in behavior, preferences, and expectations.

What U&A research covers: U&A research takes a comprehensive look at how people interact with a category, including:

• How frequently they use it
• How they perceive existing brands
• What they feel is missing or underserved

What it helps you do: With these valuable insights, you can make more informed decisions about…

• Where to improve your current product
• What new products could address unmet needs
• How well existing brands (including your own) are delivering on what people want

Benefits of Usage and Attitude Testing

Here are the advantages of U&A testing:

✅ Drives Innovation

One of the primary benefits of U&A research is its power to drive innovation. By revealing how people actually use a category and where they feel underserved, it surfaces opportunities to improve existing products and identify gaps that entirely new products could fill.

✅ Identifies Unmet Needs

U&A research reveals what customers want but aren’t getting from any current product or brand. By exposing these needs that competitors have overlooked or underserved, brands can move first to fill them.

✅ Reveals Category Blind Spots

Usage and attitude testing often reveals gaps between what companies think is happening in a category and what’s actually driving growth.

In one study we ran for a client, a long-established food brand assumed its core audience was older consumers using the product in traditional ways. But the research uncovered that younger consumers were driving growth because the product was fast, affordable, and easy to incorporate into everyday meals. This wasn’t a segment the brand had been targeting at all. Without a U&A study, this opportunity would have remained invisible.

✅ Provides Deep Category Understanding

U&A research delivers a complete picture of how people interact with a category, covering behaviors, perceptions, consumer attitudes, and unmet needs all in one study. It’s one of the most comprehensive research methods available, giving teams a solid, evidence-based foundation to build from.

✅ Enables Segmentation

U&A testing helps identify distinct groups within a category based on behaviors, consumer needs, and attitudes. These segments help brands tailor their products, messaging, and strategy to the right audiences.

✅ Guides Downstream Research

Because U&A research is broad by design, it often raises questions worth exploring further. It lays the foundation for more targeted follow-up, helping teams validate specific ideas and move toward execution. Many brands pair a large-scale U&A study with smaller, faster surveys using DIY tools like Pollfish.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Usage and Attitude Testing

Let’s take a look at some common pitfalls brands make when executing U&A testing.

🚫 Starting with assumptions about your audience

Teams often define their audience too narrowly from the outset, focusing only on current customers or known customer segments. This risks missing consumer insights from unexpected groups who could represent real opportunity.

The fix: Cast a wide net. Include people who don’t currently buy in the category, as they often reveal valuable unmet needs.

🚫 Treating U&A like a quick research project

U&A research is broad and comprehensive by nature, yet many teams underestimate the time it requires to achieve meaningful results.

The fix: Build in adequate time from the start. The depth of a well-executed U&A study is what makes it valuable. Rushing it undermines the whole point.

🚫 Letting cost concerns limit your scope

The best and most comprehensive U&A studies can require a meaningful investment, particularly in research design. But the sample costs are often comparable to other large-scale survey research, and the strategic payoff tends to far outweigh the upfront spend.

The fix: If budget is a concern, start with a focused pilot wave to prove value before scaling into a full study. The key is not to let cost assumptions keep you from doing the research at all, as a well-designed U&A study pays for itself in better strategic decisions.

🚫 Treating U&A as a one-off study

U&A research is the beginning of a research process, not the end. Many teams collect the findings and stop there, leaving most of the value on the table.

The fix: Follow up with smaller, targeted concept tests to validate the opportunities uncovered. DIY tools like Pollfish make this easy and cost-effective, turning into actionable insights.

How Prodege Approaches Usage and Attitude Research

Prodege, Pollfish’s parent company, provides full-service market research services.

We serve as a partner, not just a vendor, working closely with clients to design usage and attitude studies tailored to their specific category, audience, and business goals, rather than relying on rigid and templated approaches.

Below, let’s take a look at some of the benefits of using Prodege for usage and attitude testing.

✅ Custom, Non-Templated Approach

With Prodege, every usage and attitude study is built from the ground up based on your category, business questions, and research goals.

We don’t rely on a one-size-fits-all template. Every industry has its own dynamics, nuances, and blind spots that a generic approach will miss. That’s why we start with a discovery conversation to understand what you’re trying to learn and why it matters.

From there, we design the research objectives around you so you’re not just getting standard findings, but uncovering the specific challenges and opportunities most relevant to your business.

✅ Highly Experienced Research Team

With Prodege, you’re getting a consulting partnership. You’ll work directly with seasoned market researchers who bring 20+ years of cross-category experience to every engagement, from study design through to interpreting and applying the findings. That depth of expertise means sharper questions, richer insights, and guidance you can confidently act on.

✅ Flexible, Multi-Method Approach for a Complete View

We combine quantitative scale with qualitative research depth to deliver a complete picture of what is happening and why. Rather than being limited to one methodology, we adapt the research approach based on what the study requires.

✅ True Partnership Model

Prodege operates as an extension of your team. Once engaged, we’re as committed as you are to meeting your research goals.

✅ End-to-End Approach

We support the entire research lifecycle in-house, ensuring consistency and quality from start to finish, including:

• Research design
• Survey programming
• Sample & fielding
• Data processing & analysis
• Reporting

This eliminates the need to hand off critical parts of the research process to external vendors.

✅ Access to First-Party Respondent Panels

Prodege provides direct access to our own first-party respondent network. This offers multiple benefits, including:

• Avoiding reliance on third-party panels with limited visibility into recruitment and quality controls
• Enabling more precise targeting, stronger data integrity, and better decision-making
• Reach virtually any demographic, including hard-to-reach groups like Gen Z, male respondents, specific ethnic groups, and other underrepresented segments

Learn more about our data quality measures in our article on the 3 Survey Data Quality Issues Sabotaging Your Research (& How We Fix Them).

✅ Prodege QualityShield™

Prodege QualityShield™ is our proprietary respondent verification and fraud prevention system that ensures high-quality data. It’s built into every Prodege project:

Learn more in our article on the Top Survey Fraud Detection Solutions.

✅ Advanced Behavioral Targeting

Prodege’s panel members earn rewards not just for taking surveys, but for everyday consumer behaviors like uploading purchase receipts and shopping online. This means our audience data is grounded in verified, real-world activity, not just self-reported claims.

This also unlocks behavioral-targeting precision that many research providers can’t match. Target audiences by usage patterns and:

• Products purchased (e.g., Ruffles, Dr. Pepper, Angel Soft)
• Retailers visited (e.g., Target, Costco, 7-Eleven)

This can be particularly valuable for CPG market research companies.

Benefits of Following Up Usage and Attitude Surveys with Pollfish’s DIY Survey Tool

Many clients run a full-service usage and attitude study with Prodege, and then follow up with faster, lighter concept tests in Pollfish (our DIY survey tool) to validate what they learned.

You can learn more about Pollfish’s DIY survey capabilities in this article.

Below, we’ll take a brief look at the key benefits of Pollfish, backed by customer quotes.

Rigorous Data Quality Measures

Pollfish utilizes Prodege’s first-party audience panels to ensure high data quality, as we detail in our article on the 3 Survey Data Quality Issues Sabotaging Your Research.

In a nutshell, this includes quality measures such as:

• Verifying respondent identities through diverse activities beyond surveys, including online shopping, receipt uploads, playing games, watching videos, and more.
• A 14-day evaluation period before panelists may participate in client surveys.
• Dynamic panelist trust scores are assigned and regularly updated by a proprietary machine learning algorithm.
• Fraud detection technologies such as multi-level registration verification (e.g., CAPTCHA, Device ID Reputation, 100% Double Opt-In), tech consistency (carrier/targeting alignment check), single-user IDs (no duplicate survey takers), sophisticated anti-VPN measures, etc.

As several customers have shared:

“The most important point to make is that I trust the responses of my survey. My target audience was very specific and I could tell that the responses were legitimately coming [from] subjects in my target audience.”
– Read the full review here

“Each time I use this service I am blown away by the speed with which the responses come in and with the detail which most of them include. You can tell that the respondents take this very seriously. They must really enjoy doing it.”
– Read the full review here

“I had to get some data on a product in a tricky sector. It was proving challenging to attract participants to my study. I was able to quickly get results and some insights to be able to move forward with my work using Pollfish.”
– Read the full review here

“I was very satisfied with the results I got from Pollfish. My company was conducting market research and received very insightful help from consumers who were all verified homeowners.”
– Read the full review here

Precise Targeting Filters

Pollfish offers over 50 targeting filters across 6 categories, including:

• Demographics: Age, Gender, Hispanic Origin, Marital Status, Languages Spoken, Education Level, US Voter Registration, Household Income (US), Age & Gender of Child(ren) in Household, Type of Home, Pets in Household, Political Party Support, Hispanic Level of Acculturation, Parental Status / Pregnancy Status, Race, Device Type, Device Operating System (OS), Ethnicity, Number of Children in Household

• Geographic Criteria: US State, US Division, US DMA, US Region, US Statistical Area (CBSA), US County, US Zip Code

• Consumer Lifestyle: Beverage Consumption, Hobbies & Interests, Sports Participation, Gambling Participation, Music Streaming Services Use, Movie Theater Frequency, Home Movie Viewing Frequency, Video Game Participation, Video Game Consoles, Video Game Genres, Travel by Air for Business/Leisure, Vehicle Make/Brand Own or Lease, Vehicle Type Own or Lease, Health Ailment Diagnosis

• Employment & Occupation: Employment Status, Industry Work In, B2B Department, Number of Employees, Job Title

• Behavioral Data: Brands Purchased (In-Store), Online Shopping: Retailer, In-Store Shopper, Category Buyers, Retail Channels Shopped (In-Store), Websites Visited, Retail Channels Shopped (Online)

• Media: Video Streaming Services Used

Click here to learn more about Pollfish’s audience targeting capabilities.

As several customers have shared:

“The surveys were easy to setup, allowed me to select my very specific target and launched right away. Within a couple of days I had my results in an easy to interpret, actionable format well within my budget.”
– Read the full review here

“The ability to easily target specific demographic groups and get completed survey results back within 1-2 days has been game-changing for us.”

– Read the full review here

“When validating the survey and before processing the payment, Pollfish gives you valuable feedback on the structure of the survey and the target audience, so you can improve it before publishing it. This helped me spend my money more wisely and target the right audience.”
– Read the full review here

Transparent Pay-per-Response Pricing Model

Our transparent pricing model ensures you pay only for the survey responses you buy — no monthly subscriptions or hidden fees. You can also use our pricing calculator to get an instant pricing estimate.

As several customers shared:

“They charge based on the completed response. It is very fair and transparent. As a researcher, I have used many survey platforms, but they are the best so far.”
– Read the full review here

“The dollar amount they quote you in their cost calculator tool, and the number they show when you’re developing the survey, is the number you pay. I was burned multiple times by [competitor] charging me unexpected amounts and making it difficult to quit an expensive subscription. I’m so happy to have found Pollfish as an alternative. Their support team also responds VERY quickly to chat messages and has been tremendously helpful the few times I had questions.”
– Read the full review here

“The pricing is clear and transparent from the beginning. The results come quickly and can be downloaded in different formats and with different filters. What we like most is the ability to filter the results and analyze them separately for each segment. We highly recommend this platform.”
– Read the full review here

Fast Turnaround Time

Because we work directly with Prodege’s first-party audience network, we can offer industry-leading turnaround times, ranging from a few hours for general audiences (e.g., US adults 18+) to a few days for more niche audiences (e.g., Gen Z male university students).

Review for a general population survey:

“I needed a 25 question survey answered, and was able to get 500 completed surveys in 8 hours with Pollfish. The presentation of the results is very impressive and the demographics information Pollfish provided is invaluable.”
– Read the full review here

Review for a specialized niche:

“I’m amazed at how quickly the platform was able to deliver rich, segmentable data from over 500 respondents. I had feature-ready insights in only 3 days.”
– Read the full review here

Intuitive, Easy-to-Use Platform

Pollfish pairs advanced functionality (including audience targeting, survey design, and data analysis) with an incredibly intuitive interface that is equally accessible to anybody, from market research beginners to experienced pros.

What’s more, our AI Survey Builder makes building and editing your survey easier than ever, just by chatting with a conversational bot.

As several customers have shared:

“Pollfish is probably the single easiest software I’ve ever used. The drag and drop builder is great itself, but the template library also has anything we ever need, so you rarely have to design anything from scratch. The templates are also designed very well, we usually pick one, do a couple edits, and deploy. The whole thing takes less than 10 minutes.”
– Read the full review here

“The surveys were easy to set up, allowed me to select my very specific target and launched right away. Within a couple of days I had my results in an easy to interpret, actionable format well within my budget.”
– Read the full review here

“I have used this platform ~10x over time and find the process easy, their review process helpful, and the insights I get from people valuable as I work through different product concepts in market research. Their pricing is more reasonable than other competitors I’ve looked into, and am happily going to continue using Pollfish.”
– Read the full review here

Complimentary 24/7 Support From Seasoned Market Researchers

We offer 24/7 support, including nights and weekends. Our team goes beyond basic technical support to answer strategic questions around market research best practices, from designing your questionnaire to selecting the right audience to interpreting your data.

As several customers have shared:

“The customer service team is super responsive too for those more complex enquiries about the tool and criteria. All in all this experience has been way easier (and cheaper) than any other ‘big players’ out there.”
– Read the full review here

“I love this product. I feel like it gives me enterprise grade market survey tech at a consumer price. Highly recommend. I love how responsive the customer support team is.”
– Read the full review here

“The customer service I received was fantastic. Brilliant guidance that helped get high-quality results. I was really pleased with the outcome and highly recommend using them.”
– Read the full review here

Learn More About How We Can Help You Run Usage and Attitude Testing

We invite you to:

• Book an introductory call to learn about our full-service offering, fulfilled through our parent company Prodege.
• Create a free Pollfish account to explore our DIY survey tool (no credit card required).