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Alienation Analysis

See Whether a Product Change Would Cost You the People Who Love the Current One

Overview

Replacing one product with another is rarely all upside. Alienation Analysis answers the question behind that worry: of the participants who like what you have now, how many would reject its replacement?

It compares a Control against a Test — the change you're considering — using your Overall Liking question, and returns a verdict of Low Risk, Moderate Risk or High Risk. Reformulating a drink? It tells you what share of your Baseline Formula fans wouldn't buy Reformulation B.

Throughout this article, Products are the labels you see on a physical product study. On a concept study they read Concepts; on a survey-only study, Surveys.

Where to Find Alienation Analysis

Go to Insights, open the Analysis menu, and choose Alienation Analysis. The tab is built for alienation studies and needs an Overall Liking question. Don't see it? Ask your account manager.

You don't have to wait for fielding to finish — the analysis runs on whatever has arrived, and the verdict can move as more responses land.

Choosing Your Control and Test

Both are set in the Settings sidebar, and you need both before anything calculates.

  • Control — your current or original product, the baseline.
  • Test — the new or modified product you're evaluating.

Each dropdown hides whatever the other has selected, so the same product can never be both, and the analysis recalculates on its own — there's no Apply button. Because it's one product against one other, Product Groups aren't offered here.

The Four Groups

Each participant lands in one of four rows, based on how they rated the two products. A rating above the midpoint of the scale counts as liking a product; at or below it counts as disliking. On a 9-point scale, 6 and up is liking and 5 and down is disliking — hover the Response Category column header to see the split for your own scale.

  • Liked — liked both.
  • Disliked — disliked both.
  • Alienated — liked the Control, disliked the Test. These are the people you'd lose.
  • Noise — disliked the Control, liked the Test. Movement in the opposite direction.

The Total row is how many participants were matched across both products, and it's the denominator for all four percentages. Everyone has to have rated both — an alienation study is recruited that way on purpose — so anyone who answered Overall Liking on only one product drops out.

Why Noise Matters

A chunk of people going from liking the Control to disliking the Test sounds alarming — until you notice a similar chunk moved the other way. That symmetry isn't loyalty broken by the Test. It's people whose preferences in this category aren't firm to begin with.

So the verdict weighs Alienated against Noise:

  • When Alienated is higher than Noise, the alienation figure sets the tier — below 10% is Low Risk, 10% to 19% is Moderate Risk, 20% or more is High Risk.
  • When Alienated is at or below Noise, the noise figure sets it instead — 10% or below is Low Risk, above 10% is Moderate Risk. High Risk can't be reached on this branch.

Your Verdict, and What to Do About It

  • Low Risk (green) — the change is relatively safe. Proceed, and watch your post-launch metrics.
  • Moderate Risk (yellow) — some potential for losing people. Do more research first: Penalty Analysis shows which attributes are dragging Overall Liking down.
  • High Risk (red) — a real risk of losing loyal customers. Refine the product or test alternatives first.

Tip: Moderate Risk means two different things. Driven by Alienated, a genuine minority would defect. Driven by Noise, preferences are unstable in both directions — a signal about the category or the sample, not about your Test. Check which percentage is larger before you act.

Looking at One Segment

The Filter dropdown in the Settings sidebar narrows the whole analysis to one segment. A project-wide Low Risk can hide a group that would defect heavily, and running the analysis segment by segment is the only way to find it. Only segments that are Ready appear in the list; build them at Insights > Tools > Segments.

Filter isn't the only control that rescopes the analysis. Full Completes Only and Read Position, further down the sidebar, do too — and Full Completes Only is project-wide, so a colleague can change it and change your verdict.

Exporting the Analysis

There's no download button on this tab. To get the analysis out of Insights, generate an Instant Report — the deck carries an Alienation Analysis slide with the same table and verdict. Set the Control and Test on the Reports tab first, or the slide is left out silently.

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