From 1986 to 2021, the town of Haßloch in the Palatinate was a test market. The market research institute GfK, the Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung, used it to test new products for companies under real conditions, with real customers in real shops. In age structure and income distribution, the test households were a smaller copy of all households in Germany. The town was called Mini-Deutschland, Germany in miniature. About 3,000 of its roughly 10,000 households took part voluntarily. The test households had a GfK chip card that was scanned with every purchase. Boxes on the television sets measured how well TV advertising worked. Brands such as Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble and Wrigley tested new products there. If the people of Haßloch bought a product, it went onto supermarket shelves in the rest of the country. Products they rejected were not taken into the range. The test market ended in December 2021. GfK said it would rely more on smartphone apps, online surveys and AI-based software.