In-person Gen Z product testing for emerging brands

Real products. Real students.
Real insights.

100% verifiedin person

Real social settingsnot 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

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 report, plus marketable stats you can use on your website, packaging, and retail pitches.

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 ourselves, a 104-student product study at Indiana University, using the framework that became our 11-driver methodology. Here's what we tested and how we ran it.

What we tested

A leading sports-drink brand, tested independently.

How we ran it

Distributed through campus peer networks and completed in real social settings. Every response was tied to a confirmed student, with 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.

Here's a few examples of what we found

Finding 01 · Price

A 75-cent gap swung preference by 24 points.

Key insight75 cents decided the winner, not taste. The exact point where preference flips is worth knowing before it shows up in your sales data.

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%

Drink it as part of their regular routine.

99% of students in our study had tried the product before, but for almost all of them it never became a habit.

Key insightA product can be tried by nearly everyone and still be a routine for almost no one. Finding out where trial stops turning into habit shows a brand exactly where its growth is stuck.

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, 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 $50,000+. We built NexGen Pulse so emerging brands don't pay that.

Built at Indiana University,

inside the demographic everyone else is guessing about.

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.

Traditional survey panels capture opinions from memory. Respondents answer days or weeks after using a product, in artificial settings disconnected from the real moment of consumption. We capture behavior immediately after real product trial, inside the actual social environments where Gen Z makes decisions.

We combine what both of them miss. Verified students, physical product, real social context, and insights specific enough to inform how you market, price, and position your product.

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. We'll get back to you as soon as possible.