Total Economic Impact
Cost Savings And Business Benefits Enabled By Zappi
A FORRESTER TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT STUDY COMMISSIONED BY ZAPPI, APRIL 2025
Total Economic Impact
A FORRESTER TOTAL ECONOMIC IMPACT STUDY COMMISSIONED BY ZAPPI, APRIL 2025
Consumer insights platforms address a critical market need. They help organizations make data-driven decisions to optimize advertising and product development strategies. By leveraging a consumer insights platform, businesses can gain valuable insights into consumer preferences and market trends, enabling them to create more impactful ads and product concepts. Zappi is a solution that minimizes risks, increases organizations’ competitive edge, and drives business growth through advertising and innovation.
Zappi is an ad testing and product or service innovation testing platform that uses advanced analytics and automation to provide organizations with data-driven insights on consumer preferences. With Zappi, organizations can pretest ads or product concepts with real consumers, enabling them to iteratively develop their ads or products to align with consumer needs. Zappi allows organizations to leverage insights from previous testing rounds, enabling them to efficiently refine their strategies before committing additional time and money to new research. Zappi also provides each organization with benchmark data, resulting in a “Zappi score” that compares their performance against Zappi’s industry standards and predicts how their new products or creative content will perform in the market.
Forrester research outlines the improving capabilities of agile consumer insights platforms: “[Quantitative insights tools] have expanded their tech platform offerings beyond survey programming to include other methodologies like concept testing, one-on-one interviews, and ad testing. The foundation of consumer insights doesn’t shift, but with these new tech tools, how you get them does.”1
Organizations with better access to consumer insights can also center their organizational strategy around customer needs, ultimately boosting revenue. In 2024, Forrester found that customer-obsessed organizations — defined as organizations that “put the customer at the center of leadership, strategy, and operations” — reported 41% faster revenue growth and 49% faster profit growth than non-customer-obsessed organizations.2
Zappi commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying Zappi.3 The purpose of this study is to provide readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of Zappi on their organizations.
To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed four decision-makers with experience using Zappi. For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the interviewees’ experiences and combined the results into a single composite organization that is a global B2C organization with $5 billion in annual revenue and 7,000 employees.
Interviewees said that prior to using Zappi, their organizations relied on a variety of third-party research agencies to gather consumer insights on their product concepts or ads. However, interviewees reported that legacy agencies could take weeks to test new advertisements or product concepts, which led to critical decisions on how to improve ads or product ideas being postponed. Additionally, the interviewees reported that their legacy research costs were prohibitively expensive, which limited the number of tests their teams could run and hindered their ability to iterate on different versions of a product concept or ad idea. Some interviewees also shared that relying on legacy research vendors left them with outdated benchmark data into the performance of their ads, reducing their visibility into the components of a successful ad campaign.
After the investment in Zappi, the interviewees reported that they significantly reduced the amount of time and money required for each concept and ad test, enabling them to run more tests without increasing their consumer insights spending. The interviewees’ organizations leveraged the insights from the improved ad testing process to iteratively optimize their ads and identify which ads would resonate the most with the market, allowing them to maximize their return on ad spend (ROAS). Additionally, interviewees shared that Zappi’s fast and inexpensive concept testing process allowed them to more quickly and accurately predict which product ideas would perform best in the market, expediting the product discovery process and improving their new product success rate. Interviewees also noted that Zappi’s rapid testing cycles and self-service features led to significant time savings on managing research vendors, programming surveys, and analyzing research data.
Quantified benefits. Three-year, risk-adjusted present value (PV) quantified benefits for the composite organization include:
Improved ROAS for ads by 5% to 6.5%. The composite organization tests both ad storyboards and final cuts with Zappi to better understand which types of ads will perform best in each of its target markets. While the composite tests and iterates on each ad, it also uses Zappi insights to determine how to allocate spend across its ad portfolio, further improving its ROAS. Over three years, the improvement in ad performance amounts to $3.3 million for the composite organization.
Increased revenue from new products by 4% to 7%. With Zappi, the composite organization conducts more product innovation tests, allowing it to iterate on new product ideas and quickly determine which new product concepts will resonate in market. Products developed using Zappi’s consumer preference testing generate higher revenue for the composite compared to those developed with legacy research vendors. By accelerating its innovation testing process, the composite organization brings more new products or features to market each year, giving it more agility to quickly meet changing consumer needs. The increase in new product revenue is worth $4.1 million in additional profit for the composite organization.
Saved 10% to 15% of time for consumer insights staff. As the composite organization moves more of its research projects from legacy vendors to Zappi, its consumer insights staff reduces the amount of time that they dedicate to programming surveys, managing projects with research vendors, and analyzing survey data. These employee time savings are worth $472,000 to the composite organization.
Reduced the cost of research campaigns by 40%. It costs the composite organization significantly less to conduct a market research campaign or product launch with Zappi compared to its legacy vendors. As the composite begins to do more of its projects with Zappi, it eliminates much of its legacy research spend and reinvests the savings into running additional projects with Zappi. The composite eliminates $2.6 million of legacy research costs.
Unquantified benefits. Benefits that provide value for the composite organization but are not quantified for this study include:
Productivity gains from emerging Zappi AI features. Zappi’s AI Quick Reports, which provides automatically generated research analysis, reduces the time the composite organization dedicates to extracting insights from consumer research data. The tool automatically analyzes survey responses and synthesizes the information into visually driven reports that highlight key trends, consumer sentiment, and actionable recommendations.
Improved visibility into consumer insights with Zappi benchmark data. Zappi’s benchmarking data helps the composite organization contextualize its own consumer research results, allowing it to understand how its ad and product concepts perform relative to competitors and industry averages. With the benchmark data, the composite can identify specific areas where it excels or falls behind and determine how best to improve its ads. As more and more tests are done with Zappi, the composite’s employees can build on past data rather than discarding it, allowing for more cumulative learning over time.
Ease of use. The composite organization’s marketing and consumer insights employees use Zappi independently without having to rely on software or data science specialists to conduct tests and analyze results.
Flexibility to test imperfect innovation and ad ideas. Because Zappi tests are less expensive and faster than their legacy research tests, the composite organization’s staff can test out innovation and ad testing ideas even if they are not fully polished. This freedom to experiment encourages creativity and allows teams to iterate on their concepts before investing significant resources into testing them.
Improved employee experience for consumer insights staff. Zappi’s innovation and self-service capabilities, particularly around designing and programming surveys, reduce the project management burden for the composite’s consumer insights staff. As a result, the team dedicates less time to coordinating and managing external research partners and more time to more engaging work, such as analyzing market test results and strategizing around ad and product ideas.
Costs. Three-year, risk-adjusted PV costs for the composite organization include:
Total Zappi annual costs. The composite organization incurs fees from Zappi based on the number of tests it runs. As more of the composite organization’s business units adopt Zappi as their preferred consumer insights tool, the composite shifts more of its spending from legacy research tools to Zappi. The composite incurs a total of $3.0 million in Zappi costs.
Internal labor costs for implementation and management of Zappi. The composite organization dedicates one employee to implementing Zappi over the course of three weeks. After the implementation period, the employee dedicates a small portion of their time to managing their Zappi deployment. Overall, the composite incurs $33,000 of internal labor costs for Zappi.
Employee hours dedicated to learning Zappi. The composite organization’s consumer insights staff receive a one-time training on using Zappi during the implementation period. Zappi leads the training and provides ongoing assistance throughout deployment. While there is no direct cost for Zappi training, the internal labor dedicated to employee training amounts to $10,000.
The representative interviews and financial analysis found that a composite organization experiences benefits of $10.5 million over three years versus costs of $3.1 million, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $7.5 million and an ROI of 243%.
Improvement in ROAS compared to legacy research vendors
Return on investment (ROI)
Benefits PV
Net present value (NPV)
Payback
| Role | Industry | Region | Annual Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| VP of insights | Personal care products | North America | $20 billion |
| Insights lead | Cleaning products | Global | $7 billion |
| Director of brand insights | Food and beverages | North America | $5 billion |
| Vice president | Fintech | Global | $3 billion |
Prior to implementing Zappi, the interviewees reported that their organizations’ consumers insights staff relied exclusively on long-time, third-party research vendors to test their product concepts and ads. The interviewees noted how their organizations struggled with common challenges, including:
Slow turnaround times on tests. One of the major pain points the interviewees expressed was the slow turnaround times with traditional research methods. Interviewees shared that it would often take weeks to get results on their concept or ad tests, which slowed down their product discovery and ad development cycles. Some interviewees even reported that testing cycles were so long that there were instances where they received results indicating that an ad would not resonate in market after the ad had already launched. The VP of insights at a personal care products organization described the need for faster tests: “We needed the ability to do our research much faster. With the incumbents, it was usually around 10 business days from pressing go and getting the results back. With Zappi, we’re usually talking about one business day.”
High research costs. Interviewees also shared that running tests with their legacy research vendors was expensive, which prevented their organizations from testing as many iterations of a product or ad concept as they would like. Because their organizations’ budgets prevented them from testing more iterations, interviewees shared that they struggled to identify the specific product or version of an ad that would perform best in the market. Interviewees reported that the high research costs also stifled innovation, as staff felt that they could only justify running an expensive test on safe or fully fleshed out concepts. The insights lead at a cleaning products brand shared: “With some of the legacy tools, you needed to have polished concepts before you invested the time and money it takes to get results back. … There was this kind of paralysis where people said, ‘I have to get to a perfect concept before I test it.’”
Excessive project management work for consumer insights staff. Interviewees also expressed frustration with the excessive management required when dealing with multiple external research vendors. The consumer insights staff at the interviewees’ organizations found themselves spending a significant amount of time coordinating and managing these vendors, which took away valuable resources from their core responsibilities. Staff also dedicated hours to manually programming surveys, aggregating survey results, and reaching out to vendors for clarity on test results. The insights lead at a cleaning products brand described the challenges of the previous process: “With legacy agencies, our researchers get ready-made reports and [our staff] had to get on the phone and say, ‘This does not make sense for my business. Can you double-check this? Can you redo this?’ It actually cost more time [than with Zappi] in the end.”
Lack of real-time insights and benchmarking data into product innovation and ad performance. Interviewees shared that prior to Zappi, their organizations lacked accessible benchmark data into how their ads were performing relative to industry standards and competitors. Interviewees noted that actionable insights were essential for understanding which components of an ad were successful and what needed improvement, but that their legacy vendors either did not share this benchmark data or made it difficult for their staff to access and understand. The VP of insights at a personal care products brand stated: “The other pain point was that our market research agency partners have a black box benchmark database. They have a benchmark database, but it is proprietary, and they will never tell you what’s in there.’”
Based on the interviews, Forrester constructed a TEI framework, a composite company, and an ROI analysis that illustrates the areas financially affected. The composite organization is representative of the interviewees’ organizations, and it is used to present the aggregate financial analysis in the next section. The composite organization has the following characteristics:
Description of composite. The composite organization is a global B2C organization with 7,000 employees and $5 billion in annual revenue. Prior to adopting Zappi, the composite organization tests its ads and product concepts with legacy research vendors. The composite organization has 15 consumer insights employees across all business units. These employees are in charge of gathering and analyzing market research data, conducting consumer surveys and interviews, and providing strategic insights to inform decision-making.
Deployment characteristics. In Year 1 of using Zappi, the composite organization conducts 51 major research projects with Zappi, which include 36 projects that would otherwise be done with legacy vendors and 15 net-new research projects. As more of the composite organization’s business units adopt Zappi as their preferred research tool, the number of major research projects done with Zappi increases to 68 and 85 in Years 2 and 3, respectively.
Global B2C organization
$5 billion in annual revenue
7,000 employees
15 consumer insights FTEs across all business units
| Ref. | Benefit | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Total | Present Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atr | Profit increase from improved ad testing with Zappi | $860,625 | $1,319,625 | $1,864,688 | $4,044,938 | $3,273,953 |
| Btr | Profit gain from innovation testing with Zappi | $1,190,000 | $1,785,000 | $2,082,500 | $5,057,500 | $4,121,638 |
| Ctr | Consumer insights staff time savings | $153,900 | $192,375 | $230,850 | $577,125 | $472,338 |
| Dtr | Legacy research cost savings | $810,000 | $1,080,000 | $1,350,000 | $3,240,000 | $2,643,201 |
| Total benefits (risk-adjusted) | $3,014,525 | $4,377,000 | $5,528,038 | $12,919,563 | $10,511,130 |
Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that they used Zappi’s ad testing tool to gain rapid consumer insights throughout the advertising development process from initial concept screening to final execution evaluation. The interviewees shared that Zappi enabled them to efficiently test and iterate on various ad elements, including ideas, storyboards, and finished creatives, across both TV and digital channels. Interviewees shared that Zappi provided them with quantitative and qualitative data on consumer reaction metrics, such as brand impact, message recall, emotional response, and purchase intent.
Interviewees reported that the speed and cost of Zappi’s ad tests enabled them to run multiple tests on each ad, allowing them to identify the best-performing version of each ad. The vice president at a fintech organization described their process: “The first thing that we put into Zappi may or may not be great, but by the second or third iteration, you’ve gotten insights out of the tool and can see what people like, what people don’t like, and you’re able to improve the ad significantly. … Our goal is to get every single piece of creative that comes out of Zappi to ‘all green,’ which is above average on all key scorecard metrics.”
Interviewees reported that Zappi-provided metrics gave them a strong indication of how their ads would perform in the market, allowing them to strategically determine which ads to run and in which market. The insights lead at a cleaning products brand shared: “We found that there is a certain Zappi score threshold where if our ads cross that threshold, they will perform 2.5 times better from an ROI standpoint than the ads that test below that threshold.”
The VP of insights at a personal care products organization shared that their team had independently validated the accuracy of Zappi scores: “We did a validation project to calculate the correlation of Zappi scores with in-market success. From the early results, we had a correlation of 83%. Overall, we know that if something tests well with Zappi, it’s also performing well in the market. … We’re hoping to see at least a 20% increase in ad spend ROI for Zappi-tested ads.”
Interviewees shared that in addition to helping optimize ads, Zappi’s metrics also helped them determine how to allocate their spend across their ad portfolios. The insights lead at a cleaning products brand noted, “When we have ads test better in Zappi, we allocate more spend to that piece of creative than you would have otherwise, so we can achieve a greater ROI.”
Overall, interviewees shared that leveraging Zappi allowed their organizations to improve the performance of their ads and maximize their ROAS. The vice president at a fintech organization shared: “We went from being in the bottom 25% of financial services advertisers to being in the top 5%. We very consistently see that we have the highest performing creative in the entire financial services category running on TV. … I certainly think the performance of our advertisements is both attributed to Zappi’s ability to help us understand how it performs and to iteratively improve every piece of creative that we make.”
Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:
Prior to using Zappi, the composite organization pretests its ads with legacy vendors, but the legacy tests are expensive and slow, limiting the organization’s ability to iterate on them.
The composite organization spends 9% of their annual revenue, or $450 million per year, on ads.
In Year 1, 30% of the composite organization’s total ad spend is on ads that are tested with Zappi. As more business units adopt Zappi as their consumer insights tool, the percentage increases to 40% and 50% in Years 2 and 3, respectively.
With legacy research vendors, the composite organization has a ROAS of 150%.
With Zappi, the composite organization increases ROAS by 5% in Year 1, 5.75% in Year 2, and 6.5% in Year 3. The composite organization was already pretesting ads with legacy vendors before adopting Zappi. Had the organization not been pretesting ads before Zappi, the improvement in ROAS would likely be even more significant.
The composite organization has an operating margin of 10%. This is an average of global firms operating margins, estimated according to data from Stern Business School at New York University.4
Risks. The profit gain from improved ad testing with Zappi will vary based on:
An organization’s ad spending prior to using Zappi.
The share of ads that are tested with Zappi.
An organization’s ROAS before adopting Zappi.
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $3.3 million.
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | Annual revenue | Composite | $5,000,000,000 | $5,000,000,000 | $5,000,000,000 | |
| A2 | Ad spend as a percentage of annual revenue | Composite | 9% | 9% | 9% | |
| A3 | Total annual ad spend | A1*A2 | $450,000,000 | $450,000,000 | $450,000,000 | |
| A4 | Percentage of ad spend on ads tested with Zappi | Composite | 30% | 40% | 50% | |
| A5 | Annual spend on ads tested with Zappi | A3*A4 | $135,000,000 | $180,000,000 | $225,000,000 | |
| A6 | Return on ad spend for ads tested with legacy research vendors | Composite | 150% | 150% | 150% | |
| A7 | Revenue driven by ads with baseline return on ad spend | A5*A6 | $202,500,000 | $270,000,000 | $337,500,000 | |
| A8 | Improved return on ad spend with Zappi | Interviews | 5.00% | 5.75% | 6.50% | |
| A9 | Return on ad spend for Zappi-tested ads | A6*(1+A8) | 157.50% | 158.625% | 159.75% | |
| A10 | Incremental revenue uplift from ads tested with Zappi | A5*A9 | $212,625,000 | $285,525,000 | $359,437,500 | |
| A11 | Additional revenue driven by improved ad testing with Zappi | A10-A7 | $10,125,000 | $15,525,000 | $21,937,500 | |
| A12 | Operating margin | Research data | 10% | 10% | 10% | |
| At | Profit increase from improved ad testing with Zappi | A11*A12 | $1,012,500 | $1,552,500 | $2,193,750 | |
| Risk adjustment | ↓15% | |||||
| Atr | Profit increase from improved ad testing with Zappi (risk-adjusted) | $860,625 | $1,319,625 | $1,864,688 | ||
| Three-year total: $4,044,938 | Three-year present value: $3,273,953 | |||||
Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that they use Zappi’s product concept testing tool to improve product success rates and accelerate product discovery timelines by rapidly gathering consumer feedback on new product ideas. Because the interviewees’ organizations could understand how consumers would respond to product concepts before they were launched, the interviewees reported that products tested with Zappi performed better than non-Zappi-tested products. Interviewees also shared that they used Zappi’s automated surveys to quickly quantify consumer interest, understand purchase drivers, and refine product features based on the insights. This iterative process enabled them to eliminate weak concepts efficiently in favor of more promising ones, ensuring that their team did not dedicate months or years developing a product ill-suited to the market. By quickly prioritizing strong concepts, the interviewees reduced the time it took to bring successful products to market and reduced the risk of costly product failures.
Interviewees described how Zappi’s relatively low cost and short testing cycle times enabled them to test out more product concepts, allowing them to iterate on product concepts and predict if their products would sell. The VP of insights at a personal care products brand stated: “We are better equipped because now, we are able to test almost every idea. Before, a lot of our previous tools were cost or time prohibitive. Back in the day, we only were able to maybe test 30% to 40% of all our innovation ideas. Now, we are testing 80% to 100%.”
The insights lead at a cleaning products brand reported how Zappi allowed their organization to run frequent product concept tests to optimize new products to specific regions or audiences: “Zappi enables us to test iterations of the same idea because a lot of these products you can position towards different audiences and different needs. That helps you discard the less productive directions sooner and focus on building out the ones that seem like a bigger opportunity.”
Interviewees also shared how pretesting concepts with Zappi also reduced their product development cycles, allowing them to more quickly develop new products or features and recognize new revenue streams. The insights lead at a cleaning products brand described the accelerated cycle times: “Zappi is able to turn around tests in a matter of a single day — virtually hours — and that does cut out time for us on [the product development cycle]. A big focus for us has been reducing the discovery portion of the innovation process, and we’ve gone from a 9- to 12-month discovery process down to a 3- to 4-month discovery process by leaning more into Zappi. … Zappi is one of our preferred tools precisely because it allows us to achieve much shorter cycle times.”
The director of brand insights at a food and beverages distributor confirmed that Zappi had accelerated their organization’s product discovery cycles, adding that: “With a traditional research house, you would have somewhere in the vicinity of two weeks of fielding. … For all of our studies with Zappi, we collectively saved 30 weeks of dead time in managing the fielding of the insight studies versus actually getting to the decision.”
The vice president at a fintech organization reiterated that Zappi accelerated their product development cycles and improved their product success rate: “The improved product success rate is huge for us. … And in terms of the product development cycle, [Zappi] probably cuts off 10% of the time overall.”
Unsuccessful product launches can result in significant financial losses, reduced consumer trust, damaged relationships with distribution partners, declining investor confidence and funding opportunities, and job loss for those involved. New product launches often require millions of dollars of upfront investment and months or years of employee labor to iterating, developing, and advertising the new product. Interviewees shared that Zappi helped them avoid failed product launches as their teams were able to validate and refine their concepts with consumers before investing heavily in a new product.
“For every innovation idea, we have a clear understanding from pre-testing of how strong it will be in market. While before, we sometimes just didn’t know if something is good enough.”
VP of insights, personal care products
“We’re able to know with confidence that we’re putting out the best thing we can possibly be putting out, whether it’s an ad or a product.”
Vice president, fintech
Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:
The composite organization introduces new products or features every year. Before using Zappi, new products or features generate $350 million in revenue per year, or 7% of overall revenue. The percentage of revenue generated by new products or features varies significantly by industry; for example, new products often account for a greater share of both growth, which impacts share price, and revenue for organizations in the consumer packaged goods industry.
After implementing Zappi, the composite organization better predicts which products will resonate with consumers, improving the performance of its new products. The composite also brings more products to market each year, as it is able to reduce the product development and discovery cycle. The increase in both the number of products brought to market and the product success rate leads to a 4% increase in new product revenue in Year 1, a 6% increase by Year 2, and a 7% increase by Year 3.
The composite has a 10% operating margin.5
Risks. The profit gain from Zappi’s innovation testing will vary depending on:
The amount of revenue an organization receives from newly introduced products or features.
The length of an organization’s product development and discovery cycles.
The number of business units within an organization that use Zappi as their preferred innovation testing tool.
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $4.1 million.
Additional revenue from using Zappi’s product innovation tool
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B1 | Annual revenue | Composite | $5,000,000,000 | $5,000,000,000 | $5,000,000,000 | |
| B2 | Percentage of annual revenue attributed to new products or features | Composite | 7% | 7% | 7% | |
| B3 | Annual revenue from newly launched products | B1*B2 | $350,000,000 | $350,000,000 | $350,000,000 | |
| B4 | Increase in new product revenue from improved innovation testing and ability to bring more products to market with Zappi | Interviews | 4% | 6% | 7% | |
| B5 | Additional revenue from improved innovation testing and ability to bring more products to market with Zappi | B3*B4 | $14,000,000 | $21,000,000 | $24,500,000 | |
| B6 | Operating margin | Research data | 10% | 10% | 10% | |
| Bt | Profit gain from innovation testing with Zappi | B5*B6 | $1,400,000 | $2,100,000 | $2,450,000 | |
| Risk adjustment | ↓15% | |||||
| Btr | Profit gain from innovation testing with Zappi (risk-adjusted) | $1,190,000 | $1,785,000 | $2,082,500 | ||
| Three-year total: $5,057,500 | Three-year present value: $4,121,638 | |||||
Evidence and data. The interviewees reported that Zappi reduced the amount of time their consumer insights staff devoted to traditional market research processes, such as manually setting up surveys, aggregating and analyzing survey data, and managing back-and-forth with vendors. Interviewees also shared that Zappi saved them time by presenting all relevant research metrics in a standardized format, streamlining analysis and decision-making.
Interviewees shared that Zappi allowed their teams to generate more standardized surveys, improving the quality of both the inputs and the outputs of each survey. The insights lead at a cleaning products brand described the benefit: “Zappi is more streamlined. There are less garbage [questions] that people put in surveys just because they can, and there will be less garbage on the way out. It’s a 20% to 30% time saving on [survey design and analysis].”
The vice president at a fintech organization reported time savings both on vendor management and survey design: “We’re happy to not be writing surveys, managing projects, and doing the analysis. … It’s probably seven FTEs that you don’t have to hire in a consumer insights function with the way we’re using Zappi.”
The same interviewee went on to describe additional time savings from using Zappi’s AI Quick Reports, which automatically generated concise summaries, charts, and key insights from survey data: “We have used AI Quick Reports to absolutely pinpoint and highlight the most important aspects of the data. It definitely cuts down time on deck creation and looking at slices of data. It probably cuts off an hour in the already fast process of looking at Zappi data.”
Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:
The composite organization has 15 consumer insights FTEs split across all business units.
The average fully burdened annual salary for a consumer insights staff member is $114,000.
With Zappi, the consumer insights staff reduces the amount of time spent on manual project management tasks by 10% in Year 1. As more teams move from legacy research vendors to Zappi, these time savings increase to 12.5% and 15% in Years 2 and 3, respectively.
Risks. The consumer insights time savings will vary depending on:
The number of FTEs dedicated to consumer insights.
The number of ad and concept tests done with Zappi.
The fully burdened annual salary of consumer insights staff.
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $472,000.
Time savings for consumer insights staff
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Consumer insights staff dedicated to managing research projects | Composite | 15 | 15 | 15 | |
| C2 | Fully burdened annual salary for a consumer insights employee | Composite | $114,000 | $114,000 | $114,000 | |
| C3 | Time savings on research project management with Zappi | Interviews | 10% | 12.5% | 15.0% | |
| Ct | Consumer insights staff time savings | C1*C2*C3 | $171,000 | $213,750 | $256,500 | |
| Risk adjustment | ↓10% | |||||
| Ctr | Consumer insights staff time savings (risk-adjusted) | $153,900 | $192,375 | $230,850 | ||
| Three-year total: $577,125 | Three-year present value: $472,338 | |||||
Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that conducting tests with traditional vendors was expensive, which led to them limiting the number of tests they ran on each ad or product. While most of the interviewees reported that some of their organizations’ business units still worked with legacy vendors, implementing Zappi enabled them to eliminate much of their legacy research spend.
Across the board, interviewees shared that tests with Zappi were less expensive than with other research providers. The VP of insights at a personal care products brand shared: “The cost of a concept test has reduced by at least 30%. It’s 30% in some areas and 50% in other areas. … We decreased our overall spend with [other vendors] by at least 50% and moved most of that to Zappi.”
The director of brand insights at a food and beverages distributor also stated that the cost variance allowed them to conduct more studies with Zappi: “We did 30 studies toward the end of last year. We saw anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000 in savings per study. … There are teams that are testing now because it’s faster and cheaper than our legacy tools, which could take five or six weeks and cost $50,000. With Zappi, we’re doing more tests as a result.”
The insights lead at a cleaning products brand also reported cost savings from using Zappi: “You do save money [with Zappi]. … We take the cost differential, and we redeploy it to other research needs or to a greater volume of work with Zappi than we could have done with our legacy suppliers.”
Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:
The composite organization does 120 major market research campaigns per year, including both advertising and innovation projects.
Prior to Zappi, each major research campaign would cost the composite organization $25,000 on average.
The composite organization moves 30% of its legacy research campaigns to Zappi in Year 1, 40% in Year 2, and 50% by Year 3.
Risks. The legacy market research cost savings will vary depending on:
The number of tests done per year.
The speed at which business units migrate from incumbent research vendors to Zappi.
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $2.6 million.
Cost savings on each major research campaign
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| D1 | Advertising or innovation market research campaigns per year | Composite | 120 | 120 | 120 | |
| D2 | Average legacy research costs per campaign | Interviews | $25,000 | $25,000 | $25,000 | |
| D3 | Annual legacy research costs | D1*D2 | $3,000,000 | $3,000,000 | $3,000,000 | |
| D4 | Percentage of legacy research campaigns that are moved to Zappi | Composite | 30% | 40% | 50% | |
| Dt | Legacy research cost savings | D3*D4 | $900,000 | $1,200,000 | $1,500,000 | |
| Risk adjustment | ↓10% | |||||
| Dtr | Legacy research cost savings (risk-adjusted) | $810,000 | $1,080,000 | $1,350,000 | ||
| Three-year total: $3,240,000 | Three-year present value: $2,643,201 | |||||
Interviewees mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:
Productivity gains from emerging Zappi AI features. Some interviewees shared that their organizations had started using Zappi’s AI features. The feature most interviewees’ organizations adopted so far was AI Quick Reports, which automatically aggregated survey data and put together a report highlighting key trends and actionable recommendations based on consumer sentiment. The VP of insights at a personal care products organization noted: “I think the [AI Quick Reports] are good because they give you more depth. … With the AI report generator, you are able to look at open ends, verbatims, and so on. You get more information, and you also get recommendations.”
The insights lead at a cleaning products brand said their organization had started to pilot AI Concept Creation agents, which leveraged historical consumer data to instantaneously generate product concepts to streamline the ideation process. For example, an organization could enter a prompt, such as “Design a scented cleaning solution that would resonate with men in their forties,” and the concept creation agent can develop the product’s scent profile, packaging, key features, and branding. The insights lead at a cleaning products brand stated: “We have started to pilot Zappi’s tools, such as AI Concept Creation and AI Quick Reports. We like them, and we think that Zappi’s adding value and doing the right thing by pursuing [these AI features].”
Improved visibility into consumer insights with Zappi benchmark data. Interviewees noted Zappi’s benchmark data is comprised of consumer response data from thousands of historical product and ad tests across various categories and demographics. Their organizations used Zappi benchmark data as a comparative baseline, allowing them to understand how their own ad or product concepts performed relative to industry norms and competitor performance. By comparing their test results against these benchmarks, the interviewees’ organizations were able to make data-driven decisions to optimize their product concepts and ads. The VP of insights at a personal care products brand described the benefit of having accessible benchmarks: “We can look into their database to compare against our previous products or against the best tested products in the market in the last two years. We can easily do that right on the platform, so there is much more flexibility and much less black box thinking overall.”
The director of brand insights at a food and beverages distributor described the benefits their organization saw from using benchmark data in their ad creation process: “I think we have found a lot of value in the online dashboards where we’re able to look at our own results around things like claims testing and [industry] studies to understand which combination of claims that you tested would be best suited to reach the most amount of people or be the most relevant. In traditional market research, that has been a very cumbersome thing.”
Interviewees also said that as they ran more of their research with Zappi, they were able to build a searchable dataset of past Zappi tests, allowing them to build on past learnings. The VP of insights at a personal care products brand stated: “The reason we moved a lot of research to Zappi was that we wanted to go from silos to systems. If everyone is using Zappi consistently, then we get a lot of data in the same format and then we can look through it.’”
Ease of use. Interviewees shared that Zappi was intuitive to learn, which made it possible for them to hire consumer insights staff without advanced technical knowledge. They also shared that Zappi’s self-service features made it easy for individual staff to run surveys independently without having to bring in data scientists or Zappi support to analyze data. The VP of insights at a personal care products brand reported: “It’s so easy to use. Sometimes you have tools that can only be used by a couple of specialists, but all the Zappi tools are quite easy for a marketing person, an innovation person, and R&D folks to test their own ideas.”
Flexibility to test imperfect innovation and ad ideas. Interviewees shared that Zappi’s speed and affordability compared to legacy research vendors allowed their consumer insights staff to run tests on early stage product and ad concepts. Some interviewees reported that previously, they had to wait until ideas were near final before they could justify incurring the financial and time costs of a test. The insights lead at a cleaning products brand described the benefit: “What we like about the [concept testing] tool is that you can screen earlier stage ideas than you would be able to do otherwise. That’s another way to save time, because it’s not cost and time prohibitive. The team feels liberated to test a bunch of half-baked ideas. … We’re more at liberty to take risks, which is incredibly important to an innovation department.”
Improved employee experience for consumer insights staff. Interviewees reported that Zappi’s self-service and automation features freed their consumer insights staff from cumbersome, manual work, such as designing surveys and managing third-party research vendors. Employees were able to reallocate these hours to more engaging work, such as ideating on new product concepts or ad ideas. The insights lead at a cleaning products organization shared that: “I really like the DIY aspect. Zappi is making a big contribution in the industry, as this is changing how we think about the [consumer insights] job. It used to be that the job was a glorified project manager. You would take an order from the business, pick up the phone, call the vendors, and relay the order to them. The vendors would give you something back that you would give back to the business. We don’t want that behavior anymore.”
| Ref. | Cost | Initial | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Total | Present Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Etr | Total Zappi annual costs | $0 | $951,500 | $1,232,000 | $1,512,500 | $3,696,000 | $3,019,545 |
| Ftr | Internal labor costs for implementation and management of Zappi | $10,560 | $9,152 | $9,152 | $9,152 | $38,016 | $33,320 |
| Gtr | Internal labor costs for Zappi training | $7,260 | $968 | $968 | $968 | $10,164 | $9,667 |
| Total costs (risk-adjusted) | $17,820 | $961,620 | $1,242,120 | $1,522,620 | $3,744,180 | $3,062,532 |
Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that after their organizations implemented Zappi, they gradually moved certain business units — including region- or product-specific units — from legacy research vendors over to Zappi. Interviewees also shared that because running a market research project with Zappi was less expensive than their legacy vendors, they were able to reinvest those savings to run more tests than they would be able to otherwise.
The interviewees’ Zappi costs were comprised of research credits and a small platform fee. Pricing may vary. Contact Zappi for additional details.
Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:
In Year 1, the composite organization conducts 36 market research campaigns with Zappi that otherwise would have been run through other research vendors. As more business units adopt Zappi, 48 and 60 campaigns are migrated to Zappi in Years 2 and 3, respectively.
The composite reallocates their legacy research costs into conducting research campaigns with Zappi that they otherwise would not have performed. The composite runs between 15 and 25 net-new research campaigns with Zappi each year.
While legacy research campaigns would cost $25,000 on average, each Zappi campaign costs $15,000 on average.
The composite incurs a $100,000 platform fee for using Zappi.
Risks. Zappi costs will vary depending on:
The number of research campaigns run with Zappi.
The scope of each research campaign, including number of tests, testing demographics, and sample size.
The speed at which an organization’s business units move to Zappi as their preferred research vendor.
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this cost upward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $3.0 million.
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Initial | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E1 | Research campaigns completed with Zappi that would otherwise have been done with other vendors | D1*D3 | 36 | 48 | 60 | ||
| E2 | Net-new research campaigns completed with Zappi | Composite | 15 | 20 | 25 | ||
| E3 | Average spend with Zappi for each research campaign | Interviews | $15,000 | $15,000 | $15,000 | ||
| E4 | Total annual Zappi credit costs | (E1+E2)*E3 | $765,000 | $1,020,000 | $1,275,000 | ||
| E5 | Zappi platform fee | Composite | $100,000 | $100,000 | $100,000 | ||
| Et | Total Zappi annual costs | E4+E5 | $0 | $865,000 | $1,120,000 | $1,375,000 | |
| Risk adjustment | ↑10% | ||||||
| Etr | Total Zappi annual costs (risk-adjusted) | $0 | $951,500 | $1,232,000 | $1,512,500 | ||
| Three-year total: $3,696,000 | Three-year present value: $3,019,545 | ||||||
Evidence and data. Interviewees shared that some internal labor was required to set up Zappi, including provisioning users, integrating relevant data sources, defining specific research parameters and templates, and testing the platform. While some interviewees reported deploying Zappi over the course of a few weeks, the vice president at a fintech organization shared that they were able to set up Zappi in two days. Interviewees reported that once Zappi was implemented, a small amount of employee time was dedicated to managing user accounts, meeting with Zappi, and handling updates and technical issues.
Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:
The composite organization deploys Zappi over the course of three weeks.
A consumer insights manager oversees the implementation of Zappi. The average fully burdened annual salary for a consumer insights manager is $166,400.
After the implementation, the same employee also dedicates 5% of their time to managing Zappi on an ongoing basis.
Risks. The internal labor costs will vary depending on:
The number of staff dedicated to managing Zappi.
The fully burdened annual salary of consumer insights managers.
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this cost upward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $33,000.
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Initial | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F1 | Length of implementation (weeks) | Interviews | 3 | ||||
| F2 | Employees involved in implementation | Interviews | 1 | ||||
| F3 | Fully burdened annual salary for an employee involved in the implementation and management of Zappi | Composite | $166,400 | $166,400 | $166,400 | $166,400 | |
| F4 | Subtotal: Internal labor costs for Zappi implementation | (F1/52 weeks)*F2*F3 | $9,600 | ||||
| F5 | Employees dedicated to managing Zappi on an ongoing basis | Composite | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
| F6 | Percentage of time dedicated to managing Zappi | Composite | 5% | 5% | 5% | ||
| F7 | Subtotal: Internal labor costs for ongoing management of Zappi | F5*F6*F3 | $8,320 | $8,320 | $8,320 | ||
| Ft | Internal labor costs for implementation and management of Zappi | F4+F7 | $9,600 | $8,320 | $8,320 | $8,320 | |
| Risk adjustment | ↑10% | ||||||
| Ftr | Internal labor costs for implementation and management of Zappi (risk-adjusted) | $10,560 | $9,152 | $9,152 | $9,152 | ||
| Three-year total: $38,016 | Three-year present value: $33,320 | ||||||
Evidence and data. Interviewees shared that a few hours of training were required for their consumer insights staff to familiarize themselves with running tests with Zappi. Zappi led the initial training sessions but also provided the interviewees with self-service training resources.
Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:
The composite organization has 15 consumer insights employees across all business units with each employee trained on using Zappi. As more staff join and leave the team, two additional employees are trained each year.
Zappi training takes 8 hours for each employee.
The fully burdened hourly rate for a consumer insights FTE is $55.
Risks. Zappi training costs will vary depending on the number of employees trained on using Zappi and their familiarity with consumer insights platforms.
Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this cost upward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $10,000.
| Ref. | Metric | Source | Initial | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| G1 | Employees trained to use Zappi | Composite | 15 | 2 | 2 | 2 | |
| G2 | Hours required for Zappi training | Interviews | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | |
| G3 | Fully burdened hourly rate for a consumer insights staff member | C2/2,080 hours per year | $55 | $55 | $55 | $55 | |
| Gt | Internal labor costs for Zappi training | G1*G2*G3 | $6,600 | $880 | $880 | $880 | |
| Risk adjustment | ↑10% | ||||||
| Gtr | Internal labor costs for Zappi training (risk-adjusted) | $7,260 | $968 | $968 | $968 | ||
| Three-year total: $10,164 | Three-year present value: $9,667 | ||||||
The financial results calculated in the Benefits and Costs sections can be used to determine the ROI, NPV, and payback period for the composite organization’s investment. Forrester assumes a yearly discount rate of 10% for this analysis.
| Initial | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Total | Present Value | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total costs | ($17,820) | ($961,620) | ($1,242,120) | ($1,522,620) | ($3,744,180) | ($3,062,532) |
| Total benefits | $0 | $3,014,525 | $4,377,000 | $5,528,038 | $12,919,563 | $10,511,130 |
| Net benefits | ($17,820) | $2,052,905 | $3,134,880 | $4,005,418 | $9,175,383 | $7,448,598 |
| ROI | 243% | |||||
| Payback | <6 months |
From the information provided in the interviews, Forrester constructed a Total Economic Impact™ framework for those organizations considering an investment in Zappi.
The objective of the framework is to identify the cost, benefit, flexibility, and risk factors that affect the investment decision. Forrester took a multistep approach to evaluate the impact that Zappi can have on an organization.
Interviewed Zappi stakeholders and Forrester analysts to gather data relative to Zappi.
Interviewed four decision-makers at organizations using Zappi to obtain data about costs, benefits, and risks.
Designed a composite organization based on characteristics of the interviewees’ organizations.
Constructed a financial model representative of the interviews using the TEI methodology and risk-adjusted the financial model based on issues and concerns of the interviewees.
Employed four fundamental elements of TEI in modeling the investment impact: benefits, costs, flexibility, and risks. Given the increasing sophistication of ROI analyses related to IT investments, Forrester’s TEI methodology provides a complete picture of the total economic impact of purchase decisions. Please see Appendix A for additional information on the TEI methodology.
Benefits represent the value the solution delivers to the business. The TEI methodology places equal weight on the measure of benefits and costs, allowing for a full examination of the solution’s effect on the entire organization.
Costs comprise all expenses necessary to deliver the proposed value, or benefits, of the solution. The methodology captures implementation and ongoing costs associated with the solution.
Flexibility represents the strategic value that can be obtained for some future additional investment building on top of the initial investment already made. The ability to capture that benefit has a PV that can be estimated.
Risks measure the uncertainty of benefit and cost estimates given: 1) the likelihood that estimates will meet original projections and 2) the likelihood that estimates will be tracked over time. TEI risk factors are based on “triangular distribution.”
The present or current value of (discounted) cost and benefit estimates given at an interest rate (the discount rate). The PV of costs and benefits feed into the total NPV of cash flows.
The present or current value of (discounted) future net cash flows given an interest rate (the discount rate). A positive project NPV normally indicates that the investment should be made unless other projects have higher NPVs.
A project’s expected return in percentage terms. ROI is calculated by dividing net benefits (benefits less costs) by costs.
The interest rate used in cash flow analysis to take into account the time value of money. Organizations typically use discount rates between 8% and 16%.
The breakeven point for an investment. This is the point in time at which net benefits (benefits minus costs) equal initial investment or cost.
Total Economic Impact is a methodology developed by Forrester Research that enhances a company’s technology decision-making processes and assists solution providers in communicating their value proposition to clients. The TEI methodology helps companies demonstrate, justify, and realize the tangible value of business and technology initiatives to both senior management and other key stakeholders.
1 Source: Planning Guide 2024: B2C Marketing Executives, Forrester Research, Inc., August 1, 2023.
2 Source: The State Of Customer Obsession, Forrester Research, Inc., May 6, 2024.
3 Total Economic Impact is a methodology developed by Forrester Research that enhances a company’s technology decision-making processes and assists solution providers in communicating their value proposition to clients. The TEI methodology helps companies demonstrate, justify, and realize the tangible value of business and technology initiatives to both senior management and other key stakeholders.
4 Source: Margins by Sector, Stern Business School New York University, January 2025.
5 Ibid.
The financial results calculated in the Benefits and Costs sections can be used to determine the ROI, NPV, and payback period for the composite organization’s investment. Forrester assumes a yearly discount rate of 10% for this analysis.
These risk-adjusted ROI, NPV, and payback period values are determined by applying risk-adjustment factors to the unadjusted results in each Benefit and Cost section.
The initial investment column contains costs incurred at “time 0” or at the beginning of Year 1 that are not discounted. All other cash flows are discounted using the discount rate at the end of the year. PV calculations are calculated for each total cost and benefit estimate. NPV calculations in the summary tables are the sum of the initial investment and the discounted cash flows in each year. Sums and present value calculations of the Total Benefits, Total Costs, and Cash Flow tables may not exactly add up, as some rounding may occur.
Readers should be aware of the following:
This study is commissioned by Zappi and delivered by Forrester Consulting. It is not meant to be used as a competitive analysis.
Forrester makes no assumptions as to the potential ROI that other organizations will receive. Forrester strongly advises that readers use their own estimates within the framework provided in the study to determine the appropriateness of an investment in Zappi. For any interactive functionality, the intent is for the questions to solicit inputs specific to a prospect's business. Forrester believes that this analysis is representative of what companies may achieve with Zappi based on the inputs provided and any assumptions made. Forrester does not endorse Zappi or its offerings. Although great care has been taken to ensure the accuracy and completeness of this model, Zappi and Forrester Research are unable to accept any legal responsibility for any actions taken on the basis of the information contained herein. The interactive tool is provided ‘AS IS,’ and Forrester and Zappi make no warranties of any kind.
Zappi reviewed and provided feedback to Forrester, but Forrester maintains editorial control over the study and its findings and does not accept changes to the study that contradict Forrester’s findings or obscure the meaning of the study.
Zappi provided the customer names for the interviews but did not participate in the interviews.
Consulting Team:
Matt Dunham
ABOUT FORRESTER CONSULTING
Forrester provides independent and objective research-based consulting to help leaders deliver key transformation outcomes. Fueled by our customer-obsessed research, Forrester’s seasoned consultants partner with leaders to execute on their priorities using a unique engagement model that tailors to diverse needs and ensures lasting impact. For more information, visit forrester.com/consulting.
© Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®, Technographics®, Forrester Wave, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies.
https://mainstayadvisor.com/go/mainstay/gdpr/policy.html
PDF