MVP Testing for Products You Can’t Ship as a Beta: A Guide for FMCG Innovation Teams

The pressure to bring products to market faster is familiar to every R&D leader. Increasingly, so is the instruction to adopt a more agile approach to innovation, often accompanied by the suggestion that teams should be developing Minimum Viable Products (MVPs).

It’s a sensible ambition so why invest months refining a formulation before understanding whether consumers value the benefit it delivers?

For FMCG innovation teams, there’s an obvious complication. You can’t release a half-finished shampoo, protein bar or skincare formulation to a small group of customers and update it the following week. Physical products must meet safety, stability, regulatory and manufacturing requirements before they reach the market.

That doesn’t mean MVP thinking is inappropriate for FMCG but we need to translate the principles into an approach that respects the realities of physical product development.

The opportunity for R&D is significant: to learn what consumers genuinely value earlier, focus technical investment where it matters most and reduce the costly rework that happens when fundamental assumptions are challenged too late.

Why the Software Definition of “MVP” Doesn’t Translate to Formulated Products

The MVP concept was popularised by Eric Ries through The Lean Startup. The principle is to create a version of a product that enables the maximum amount of validated learning with the least effort.

In software, this often means releasing a basic but functional product, observing how people use it and making improvements through successive iterations. The product can evolve continuously while customers are using it.

For formulated products, the mechanics are different. A new food product needs to be safe, stable and manufacturable. A personal care formulation must meet relevant regulatory requirements and demonstrate appropriate performance. A consumer healthcare product may require extensive validation before it can be made available for use. These requirements cannot simply be deferred in the interests of speed.

However, the fundamental principle behind MVP development remains valuable as we don’t need to complete every aspect of product development before we can start learning from consumers.

The distinction is between launching an unfinished product and testing an unfinished product under appropriate controlled conditions. For FMCG R&D, an MVP isn’t a cheaper or smaller version of the final formulation. In our approach to product development, we define it as:

Minimum Viable Product (MVP): The leanest version of a product that still delivers meaningful user value and clear point(s) of difference vs today’s solutions

That definition changes the development question. Rather than asking how quickly we can build the complete product, we ask which elements of the experience are essential to delivering value, and what evidence we need before committing further resources.

What Can Be Validated Before Committing to Full Formulation (and What Can’t)

One of the most valuable shifts R&D teams can make is to distinguish between the questions that require a finished product and those that can be answered much earlier. There is a surprising amount we can learn before finalising the formulation.

What we can investigate early:

• Jobs to be Done (JTBD): What functional or emotional need is the consumer trying to fulfil, and where do existing solutions fall short?
• Core product benefits: Which improvements would make the greatest difference to the consumer’s experience?
• Sensory Attributes: Which aspects of flavour, texture, appearance, fragrance or usability influence preference, trust and differentiation?
• Format and dose: How do consumers respond to different formats, application methods or usage experiences?
• Claims and communication: Can consumers understand the intended benefit, and does the proposed product story give them a compelling reason to choose it?

These questions can be explored through qualitative product research, comparative product experiences, bench samples, early prototypes and structured consumer testing.

Importantly, what consumers say they prefer isn’t always enough. Observing how they interact with products, asking them to make trade-offs and understanding why particular experiences appeal can reveal far more useful development direction.

What still requires later-stage validation? Shelf life, manufacturing scale-up, final product safety, regulatory approval and sustained repeat purchase behaviour cannot be fully established through early MVP testing. Some functional benefits also require objective technical evidence rather than consumer perception alone.

The aim isn’t to replace these essential development activities, it’s to enter them with greater confidence that the product being developed is one consumers will value. This is where a disciplined MVP testing plan becomes particularly useful and every test should have a clear learning objective, an appropriate stimulus and a defined decision it will inform.

Building a Physical MVP: Prototypes, Small Batches and Claims Testing

For physical products, MVP testing is most effective when it progresses from understanding the desired experience to exploring the technical solutions capable of delivering it.

1. Start with the consumer experience, not the formulation

Before developing prototypes, identify the Jobs to be Done and Product Attributes that matter most. The Untapped Ideal Product Model® (IPM) Blueprint provides a starting point by connecting user needs to the Attributes and delivery Mechanisms that could satisfy them. From there, an Attribute Hierarchy helps establish priorities across three tiers:

• Tier 1: Core & Hygiene-factor Attributes that help to deliver basic product functionality and meet essential compliance requirements.
• Tier 2: Must-Have Attributes that help to drive trust and repeat use of the product.
• Tier 3: Delightful Differentiators that help to create emotional connections and brand differentiation.

A meaningful MVP should include Attributes from all three tiers. This is an important distinction because stripping a product back to its most basic functionality may reduce complexity, but it can also remove the very experience that would make consumers choose it.

For a deeper dive into how to translate consumer needs into differentiated products, our book, Untapping Innovation, explores the frameworks and thinking behind our approach to product innovation.

2. Use prototypes to establish what is good enough and what is ideal

Once the priority Attributes are clear, R&D can explore the delivery Mechanisms that might achieve them. Bench prototypes are particularly useful here because they allow teams to investigate specific sensory or functional differences before investing in more complex development. Consider an oil-control moisturiser where a cooling sensation is an important Attribute.

A technical team might initially focus on the formulation’s measurable properties. But the consumer experiences the product differently: Does it feel refreshing? Is the cooling noticeable? Does it become uncomfortable? Through Mechanism Range-Finding, teams can explore the range between unacceptable, good enough and ideal performance. Rather than assuming that greater intensity always delivers a better experience, R&D can establish user-centric specification ranges and use them to guide formulation decisions. Where appropriate, small-batch or pilot-plant prototypes can then provide a more realistic experience, allowing consumers to assess the product in conditions closer to actual use.

This is particularly valuable when several Attributes interact. A change intended to improve texture, for example, may also influence appearance, application or perceived performance.

3. Test whether the benefit can be communicated

A technically successful prototype doesn’t automatically create a compelling consumer proposition. As product performance becomes clearer, claims testing helps establish whether the intended benefit can be expressed in language consumers understand, believe and value. This requires more than testing which headline sounds most appealing because claims must connect a meaningful consumer benefit to credible product evidence, with appropriate substantiation for the category.

Demonstrations can also help consumers recognise a difference that might otherwise be difficult to explain. Our Untapped Claims & Demos® guide explores how R&D teams can translate product advantages into distinctive, credible claims and demonstrations.

How Untapped MVP & Prototyping™ Structures the Process

We’ve developed Untapped MVP & Prototyping™ to help R&D teams make these decisions systematically. Building on the Ideal Product Model, the approach combines three elements: Attribute Hierarchy, Mechanism Range-Finding and Stakeholder Score-carding. Together, they help teams identify the minimum set of Attributes needed to create a meaningful product experience, establish user-led specification ranges and evaluate delivery Mechanisms against consumer, technical and commercial requirements.

Prototypes are then tested iteratively against these standards, allowing the team to understand which improvements genuinely add value and which introduce complexity without sufficient benefit. This is to give R&D a clearer basis for deciding where to invest.

For example, in a personal care development project with a global FMCG business, Untapped helped translate consumer insights into three actionable MVPs. These were subsequently developed into prototypes for larger-scale consumer testing, with all three outperforming internal and external benchmarks on critical measures. The value of that result lies not only in the performance achieved, but in the clarity of the development direction that preceded it.

Three MVP Testing Mistakes Common in FMCG Innovation Teams

1. Building a miniature launch instead of an MVP. It’s tempting to treat an MVP as a nearly finished product, complete with polished packaging, finalised claims and a broad set of performance requirements. But this can recreate the cost and complexity of conventional development without delivering the early learning MVP thinking is intended to provide.

A better approach: Start with the smallest set of consumer experiences necessary to test the product’s value and differentiation. Build only what is needed to answer the next important question.

2. Testing too many things at once. When a prototype changes formulation, fragrance, packaging and application experience simultaneously, positive consumer feedback may be encouraging, but it can be difficult to establish what actually drove the response. That makes subsequent technical decisions harder.

A better approach: Design prototypes to explore meaningful differences in specific Attributes and Mechanisms. Where changes cannot be isolated, use careful research design and probing to understand the contribution of each element.

3. Treating the incumbent product as the specification. Competitor benchmarks are useful, but matching an existing product across every Attribute can lead to unnecessary development effort. It may also reinforce the category conventions that consumers would welcome an opportunity to move beyond.

A better approach: Use consumer research to distinguish between essential category expectations and the Attributes that genuinely drive preference and differentiation. Invest in exceeding expectations where it matters, rather than everywhere.

When to Move From MVP to Full Scale Development

The purpose of MVP testing is to establish when there is enough evidence to justify the next level of investment. R&D should focus on three questions.

First, have we demonstrated meaningful consumer value? The priority Attributes should have been tested with relevant consumers and shown to meet their defined action standards, including the elements that differentiate the product from existing alternatives.

Second, can we communicate that value credibly? The intended benefit should be clear and compelling, with an evidence plan capable of supporting the eventual product claims.

Third, do we understand the remaining risks? A Stakeholder Scorecard can bring together consumer preferences with technical feasibility, regulatory, financial, supply chain and brand considerations.

The decision to progress becomes stronger when the central uncertainty is no longer whether consumers want the experience, but how best to deliver it consistently, safely and commercially. That doesn’t mean consumer learning stops. It means the evidence is sufficiently strong to justify the next stage of development. Once the product experience is defined, Untapped Product Story™ provides a natural next step, connecting the user need, product benefit and supporting science into a compelling proposition.

Better MVP testing means better R&D decisions

The greatest opportunity for FMCG is to adopt the discipline of learning early, while retaining the scientific rigour that physical products demand. Too often, teams spend time optimising Attributes before establishing whether consumers value them. By bringing user evidence into development earlier, R&D can focus technical effort more effectively, reduce avoidable rework and build stronger alignment with commercial colleagues.

A good MVP doesn’t compromise on what matters. It helps the team discover what matters before the most expensive decisions have been made. Explore the Untapped MVP & Prototyping™ tool to see how consumer-led specifications and iterative testing can support your development process.

If you’re working through a specific formulation challenge, get in touch to discuss how a focused MVP testing sprint could help your team establish the evidence needed to move forward. You can also explore our case studies to see how this approach has been applied in product development.