In-person Gen Z product testing for emerging brands

Real products. Real people.
Real insights.

100% verifiedin person

Real social settingshouses, not labs or screens

Decisionsnot data

We put your product in the hands of verified college students in real social settings, from food and beverage to any consumer product built for Gen Z, then turn what actually happens into decisions you can act on.

Start a conversation See how it works

Validated with a 104-person study at Indiana University, before asking a single brand to pay us.

You ship product. We come back with answers.

You send us your product

We handle everything else, including distribution through our campus network, participant incentives, and data collection.

Students try it for real

This isn't an online panel or a lab. Your product gets tried where Gen Z actually eats, drinks, and decides, through fraternities, sororities, clubs, and campus organizations. Every participant is a verified student.

You get answers, not spreadsheets

A professional insights deck and written report, plus a marketable stat you can use on your website, packaging, and retail pitches. Data tells you 62% picked one over the other. An answer tells you it was the price, not the flavor, and what to do about it.

Students walking together between campus housing buildings

Online panels have a bot problem. We don't.

An estimated 15 to 30% of online panel responses are fraudulent, and AI bots now pass survey quality checks over 99% of the time. Our model is structurally immune.

Online panel research

×Anonymous respondents nobody can verify
×15–30% estimated fraudulent responses
×Nobody ever touches the product
×Professional survey-takers optimizing for speed

NexGen Pulse

✓Every respondent is a verified .edu student
✓Product physically tried minutes before answering
✓Real social settings, not screens
✓Time gates + attention checks on every survey

Sources: published industry fraud estimates; Dartmouth study, PNAS 2025.

Proof we ran before the pitch.

Before taking on a single brand, we ran a full campaign on ourselves, a 104-student product study at Indiana University, using the framework that became our 11-driver methodology. Here's what we tested, how we ran it, and what we found, presented the way we'd present it to you.

What we tested

A leading sports-drink brand, tested independently. They weren't a client. We ran the study on our own.

How we ran it

Distributed through campus peer networks and completed in real social settings. Every response was tied to a confirmed student, behind time gates and attention checks.

What we measured

The behavioral drivers that decide adoption: taste, price sensitivity, occasions, purchase triggers, habit formation, and where students actually buy.

Finding 01 · Price

A 75-cent gap swung preference 24 points.

Key insight75 cents decided the winner, not taste. Most brands guess at pricing. This is what measuring it looks like.

Finding 02 · Occasions

58.7%

Drink it after a night out.

Recovery from a night out beat every sports occasion in our study, including post-workout.

Key insightThis category's real job on campus is social recovery, not athletics. That changes which occasion matters most.

Finding 03 · Habit

15%

Turned trial into a habit.

99% of students in our study had already tried it, but only 15.4% drank it routinely.

Key insightAlmost everyone had tried it. Almost nobody stuck with it. The growth isn't in more first tries, it's in turning triers into regulars.

Every campaign answers the questions that decide your next move.

Insights deck + written report

Built on our 11-driver behavioral framework: what triggers purchase, where students expect to buy, what they choose instead, the price where preference breaks, and whether your product becomes a habit or stays a one-time trial.

Your marketable stat

More credible than any influencer reaction, and yours to use everywhere: website, packaging, retail meetings, investor decks.

Yours might read:

"Rated 8.7/10 by 250+ IU students"

Real purchase behavior

A campaign discount code shows you real purchases in the 30 days after trial, not just survey answers.

Custom questions

Your kickoff call tells us the decisions you're facing. We build custom questions that answer them, on top of our core behavioral methodology.

3 to 5 weeks from signed agreement to delivered deck.

Industry cost guides put traditional in-person research at $20,000 to $40,000 for a study this size. We built NexGen Pulse so emerging brands don't pay that.

Built at Indiana University,

inside the demographic everyone else is guessing about.

Before asking any brand to pay us, we ran a 104-person product study at IU with our own methodology to prove the process end to end.

We built NexGen Pulse with new and emerging brands in mind, the founder-led kind, where one honest campaign can change what you do next. You don't need an enterprise research budget or a retail footprint to work with us.

We are not a survey company, and we are not a sampling agency. Sampling companies hand out product and tell you how many people touched it. Survey panels collect answers from anonymous respondents who never touch anything.

We combine what both of them miss: verified students, physical product, real social context, and a framework that turns what happened into what you should do about it.

Every insight we deliver has to earn its place by driving a real decision: your flavors, your price, your packaging, your next retail pitch.

Quick answers.

Do we need to be in retail?

No. Presale and DTC brands are exactly who we built this for. Launching something new, choosing a flavor, setting a price, or getting ready for a retail pitch, those are all the right moments to run a campaign. Or maybe you just want to know what Gen Z actually thinks of your product. That works too.

What do you test?

Food, beverage, and consumer products built for Gen Z.

What does it cost?

Scoped per campaign. Start a conversation and we'll come back with a proposal.

Have a product Gen Z should be trying?

Tell us what you're working on and what you're trying to figure out. Founder to founder, we'll get back to you within a day.