Hi all,

In my corporate job, very often I’m taking part in different projects, trials, testing rounds and remote discussion about introduction of new IT products and solutions that should simplify our corporate tasks and make life easier.

Some new tools are successful, some are disasters that require replacement after only few years.

During one of these boring teleconferences, I thought, that pheromones like any other products should go thru testing periods before being introduced on the market.

Does anybody know, how the new products are tested? Are there here any vendors or befriended/associated people? On which statistical sample/group are run the tests? How they are designated?

When the product recipe is being improved, how the vendors make sure that the new version is tested in the same enviroment?

Just being curious. I think we all here believe, that buying a product that doesn’t work or works completely accidentally is like throwing your money thru the window.

All statements from people closer to the matter, vendors etc. are welcome.

The majority of the vendors here have a vendor's account and operate under pretty close scrutiny, with varying degrees of interaction.

That being said, most vendors, when they create or improve a product, send it out to evaluation groups to use and report upon. Exactly how they recruit the participants in their focus groups varies. I've seen some open calls here and there on this site and others, but a lot of the vendors source their groups from their own forums, or by other arbitrary means.

Once a consensus of effects and/ or potency is established the vendor will either market the product (more than likely named by the testers or because of their reports) or tweak it more until it is right, and sometimes just not market it.

As most to all of these companies are small, there just isn't the budget for laboratory studies, independent researching, etc. Overall though, the community tends to be self-policing, self-supporting, and there is a type of symbiosis between the vendors and the users; as the one relies upon the other.