Whether you’re a budding entrepreneur with a great idea for a new product, or a member of a sensory or insights team on one of the world’s largest CPG brands, there’s a lot of risk to launching a new product out into the world. 

If you’re a new retail brand, you’re bootstrapped or beholden to investors–either way, cash is finite. If you’re a product innovator for a Fortune 500 manufacturer, you’ve got thousands of team members counting on you to build a product consumers love–and they’ve got millions of dollars in advertising budget, supply chain preparations and more ready to bring whatever you build to market.

Whatever the size of your company or budget, the stakes are high. You better not go to market until you’re confident you have a winning product ready. That’s where product testing comes in. There are many ways to test a product, but only a research-grade methodological approach will give you reliable, accurate data to ensure your product is market-ready.

IHUT (or in-home usage testing) can be one of the most effective ways to get the consumer data you need to go to market with confidence.

FREE EBOOK: 7 Trends in IHUT

IHUT (In-home Usage Testing): What it is and why it’s important

In-home usage testing puts your product or prototype in the hands of real consumers who fit your target market demographic and psychographic (behavioral) profile. These might be consumers who have purchased your product in the past, consumers who have purchased a competitor product in the past, or those who express openness to trying your kind of product.

For example, you might want to field an IHUT if:

• You want to know how women between the ages of 40 and 65 who regularly purchase healthful supplements feel about your new multivitamin.
• You want to know if men who wear a certain brand or kind of underwear like the look and feel of your competitive prototype.
• You want to know if children whose parents have purchased your brand of yogurt at least 3 times in the past six months can taste a difference in a new formulation.

Importantly, these consumer testers try the product in the natural environment of their own homes. In order for your data to be as accurate as possible, your testing must be run in the real context of its intended usage, at the fidelity your product will be available in supermarkets (or whatever storefront from which consumers will purchase the product). 

Of course, you as the consumer scientist cannot stand in their kitchen with your lab coat and clipboard to watch them try your new crackers. That’s why so many sensory and insights teams rely on IHUT to get the answers they need.

With IHUT, however, there’s so much more to nail down beyond crafting a professional-grade, rigorous survey design. Your product testing audience must be chosen deliberately and meticulously, and your products must arrive at their homes in the correct condition, with simple, clear instructions on how the survey is to be conducted.

That might sound like a lot to manage, but it’s a crucial step for go-to-market readiness. That’s why the best brands often work with IHUT professionals and technologies to ensure that each step of this involved process is handled by experts they can trust.

Why use IHUT (In-home Usage Testing) for product validation

Risk mitigation and sustainable product development 

In-home usage testing is the best way to mitigate the inherent risk of launching a new product or changing an in-market product. 

Money–sometimes millions of dollars worth of it–is not the only thing at stake. When companies bring a product to market that misses the mark, they also risk the future of our planet. In fact, every year, 30,000 new products launch, and over 90% fail (source). 

When a company takes a product to market without understanding what customers really want, they run the risk of introducing a brand that consumers will snub, sending potentially millions of units of product to landfills. 

Brands innovating new products or making changes to their product lines have a responsibility to ensure the physical products they bring to market give shoppers what they need–and nothing the world doesn’t. 

Untapped opportunities for usage occasions and messaging creation

It’s possible your new or newly-changed product could miss the mark on key usability metrics or sensory metrics like flavor and consistency. But just as often, products actually offer benefits or features the product creators never intentionally innovated for. This exciting possibility makes it crucial to in-home usage test for:

1. Occasion discovery
2. Hearing how your consumers actually use and talk about your product.

Take, for example, the phenomenon that is Truly, the hard seltzer from The Boston Beer Company. The idea was born from a member of their product innovation teams who enjoyed the occasional post-workout drink with her Crossfit friends. They craved a health-conscious beverage: something refreshing, light-bodied, carbonated and with fewer calories. 

While the product was originally created with athletes in mind, Truly and the spiked seltzer category quickly became a favorite of summer drinkers enjoying a light, fruited, and refreshing drink at their Fourth of July pool party or boat ride on the lake. By conducting usage occasion testing, the Truly team was able to capitalize on their initial success amongst their core consumers and expand amongst massive groups of consumers nationwide who loved the product, too.

When brands add a qualitative testing component to their survey design, they can also discover what words consumers use to talk about their product, and what perceptions they have of their product. This could be as simple as, for example, testing a new shade of blush with plans in the works to call it “Pretty in Pink,” only to realize their product testers keep using the word “red” to describe the shade instead. 

Remember this famous example from Mad Men? When Peggy, acting as a lipstick product tester, describes the trashcan of tissues used for lip blotting as a “basket of kisses,” she inspires the key messaging for their ad campaign.

These kinds of insights can inform or even transform an entire advertising campaign–so be sure to listen to your consumers before spending all that budget.

Authentic usage for authentic results

Often, brands considering product testing choose between two methods: central location testing or in-home usage testing. (More on those differences can be found in this blog.)

Many brands are tempted by the relative ease and (historically) lower cost of central location testing (CLT). You can completely control how the products are presented to consumers and you can watch and measure their reactions in person. 

Unfortunately, however, central location testing is flawed most fundamentally by one key factor: consumers can’t test the product in the natural environment of their own home. Consider how results might differ from in-home usage when testing a new kitchen spray in an office, or trying a baking kit in an industrial kitchen, or applying a new serum in the fluorescent lighting of a lab instead of your bathroom at home. It just doesn’t compare to the authenticity of consumers’ natural environments.

Another major pitfall of CLT is that any kind of longitudinal testing is nearly impossible, or at best, increases cost significantly. If you want to answer major questions like:

• Will my product fit into existing habits, or will consumers form new ones?
• Does my product produce the intended effect over a prescribed period of time?
• Does my product support or enable daily habits? Weekly habits? How quickly do consumers use a single unit?

You may be wondering: How long does my IHUT study have to be? While there’s no exact or universal answer, the vast majority of products are used more than once, and of course you want to build a product that encourages repeat purchase and long-term loyalty. So whether you’re testing a household cleaning product over a couple weeks or a mattress over the course of several months, you’ll want time to assess product performance.

Without the benefit of an at-home, organic environment, there’s no way to accurately measure and assess the relative success of your product. Your data will inevitably be colored by artificial environments where testers are aware they are being observed. The only way to know how consumers really feel about your product is to collect data in authentic environments.

Luckily, tech-enabled IHUT is making in-home usage testing more accessible, faster, and more cost-effective than ever before. 

Types of CPG verticals that can benefit from product testing (with real Highlight client examples)

Grocery is a key category for in-home usage testing. Given the relative low cost and weight per unit, sending product for sampling is extremely cost-effective and enables sufficient sample sizes for statistically significant insight gathering. 

Tree Top Applesauce is a great example to recently use Highlight’s IHUT solution to get data they needed.

• They identified their top performing SKUs, informing retail and distribution strategy
• Open-ended feedback from parents and their children inspired compelling, consumer-centric marketing messaging
• With data proving how well the product performed, the go-to-market team was able to secure a bigger budget for launch

Household items is another vertical that requires in-home usage testing. Whether your product is cleaning spray, laundry detergent, or a vacuum cleaner, only the rigors of daily life in a real home can show whether a product is up to the challenge.

Clorox is one brand that turns to Highlight again and again to support their product research roadmap. They’ve used Highlight’s IHUT to:

• Understand purchase intent and price sensitivity
• Measure efficacy and adjust formulation accordingly
• Assess key sensory metrics and stay ahead of the trend curve

Personal care and beauty products especially need the advantage of in-home usage testing, as these products absolutely require usage over time to measure things like perceived efficacy and occasion usage. 

Journ Beauty is a skincare and beauty brand that needed a community of product testers to assess their line of foundation across a large variety of skin tones and skin types. Highlight’s nationwide community of highly-engaged testers fit the bill exactly.

“It was very powerful that Highlight offered a pool of people with different skin tones and with different skin concerns,” said Sara Shah, CEO and founder of Journ Beauty. “[IHUT] will be something we'll be looking to leverage in the near future as we launch more products."

Products for pets are almost exclusively tested through IHUT due to the realities of pet ownership. (Can you imagine gathering 50 cats at one central location for product testing?) Pet product testing also often requires a longitudinal component, such as the digestive benefits of a new food product.

Highlight supported a major nationwide pet brand in the development of a new cat litter scent. With Highlight’s IHUT solution, the brand team was able to:

• Conduct a 7-day trial with live results incoming to the Highlight platform from Day 1 
• Incorporate qualitative testing with video submissions and in-depth interviews
• Understand key purchase drivers among different consumer demographics

Health-supporting products absolutely need to be tested longitudinally to understand how consumers perceive efficacy, making IHUT claims testing the best choice for these kinds of brands.

Wile, a feminine wellness brand, relied on Highlight’s IHUT solution to validate claims for their perimenopausal supplement. In just over a month, their team:

• Had data-driven results around symptom relief and product efficacy
• Better understood purchase intent and price sensitivity
• Gained over 100 product reviews to integrate to their website product pages and other marketing communications 

Apparel testing, or wear testing, is a relative newcomer to the product testing world, but as apparel and footwear categories become more crowded, wear testing has become table stakes for such brands–especially brands like running shoes or other technical gear that consumers rely on for performance.

A major athletics brand came to Highlight to find a niche group of product testers that run at least twice a week as a part of their normal routine and already wear a running vest. With a Highlight IHUT, the brand gained:

• Photo and video qualitative feedback over a 10-week study
• An understanding of purchase drivers among different consumer demographics
• Measurements of durability over long-term, organic product usage

What metrics should I track in an IHUT test to measure product success?

The metrics you choose to measure in an in-home usage test depend on:

1. Your business goals
2. The kind of product you are testing

For example, a team of sensory scientists developing a new yogurt formulation may be entirely interested in measuring only sensory metrics, such as flavor, sweetness levels, or consistency. Their brand team, however, may be looking for a totally different set of metrics, such as qualitative feedback to inform their messaging strategy or appeal (or lack thereof) of the packaging design. 

With so many ways to measure product success, it helps to have a guide. That’s why Highlight’s product testing platform includes Solution Blueprints–configurable survey design created by our in-house researchers and sensory scientists. With these Blueprints, beginners can follow the template, or more advanced researchers can make the edits they need to create a custom survey design. Regardless of your skill level, Blueprints make every Highlight user a product research pro. 

Best practices for recruiting IHUT participants 

When it comes to in-home usage testing, the product testers you choose to recruit are everything. As the saying goes, “garbage in equals garbage out.” If you want to collect the most high-quality consumer insights possible, you need to ensure your data input is high-quality. So that begs the question: how do you recruit the right participants for an IHUT test?

To answer this question, you need to return to your business goals and your unique product: 

• Are you creating a product that will directly compete with an existing product in the category? Or are you creating something new that might be similar to other products in a given category, but will be incremental to the category? 
• Do you have a solid idea of your core consumer audience? Or do you need to conduct further research on the demographic and psychographic profile(s) of your biggest fans?

Depending on your answers to questions like these, you might find yourself building audiences of product testers like:

• Consumers who have purchased your product and a competitive product at least once in the past three months
• Consumers who are open to trying your kind of product, even if they haven’t purchased it or something similar in the past
• Consumers who fit a certain hair or skin type for a specialized beauty product
• Consumers with an existing habit, such as those who exercise at least three times weekly

The best communities of product testers have a dedicated community team that not only recruit engaged and articulate product testers who accurately reflect and represent the market, but also actively manage and cultivate the community to provide support for product testers, because anything can–and does–go wrong. What if a product tester experiences an error with shipping? What if a product tester receives a damaged product? What if a product tester has a question about the survey? It’s important that a “customer care” team is on hand to help them complete the study the way it was intended.

Learn more about how Highlight supports their nationwide community of product testers

By working with the right community of product testers, IHUT can also be an effective tool to reach niche audiences. For example, in an IHUT conducted by feminine wellness brand Wile, they were able to reach an audience of people within a specific age gap experiencing a specific set of perimenopausal symptoms. In another IHUT, they tested with a cohort of people who were about to give birth to assess the perception of efficacy for a postpartum wellness supplement. To reach such specific audiences, it’s important to work with a community or panel of product testers that has as much depth as it does breadth.

Did you know? Highlight customers have the ability to engage super niche audiences (as low as 3% IR audiences!)

Incentives may also be used to motivate product testers–but never at the expense of quality or demographic and psychographic fit. It’s important to offer just the right amount in the form of compensation or gift card–not so much that you incentivize people who just want to make a quick buck, but not so little that testers don’t feel compelled to finish the study. So how do you know the right amount to offer in the form of incentive? An experienced IHUT provider will have the benchmark data you need to understand what has worked (and what hasn’t) for similar IHUT they’ve run in the past.

Once you’ve run your survey with your selected audience of product testers, you should receive a readout of all the relevant insights gleaned from this group–but you should also access your full dataset for the sake of accuracy and transparency. (If you’re already a Highlight customer, ask your account manager about your post-survey crosstabs spreadsheet.)

Common mistakes to avoid during IHUT

One of the most common challenges beginners face when conducting an IHUT is the realities of logistics and shipping. 

In recent years, it’s become a popular choice to leverage social media as a way to find product testers. While maintaining an online community can offer some level of directional data, it is a limited means to conduct IHUT for a number of reasons:

1. These product testers are hand raisers who found you–that means they’re biased to accept your brand and like your products.
2. That also makes it a challenge to create blinded tests. Even if you have the means to hide labels, those that are familiar with your brand may be able to tell the difference too easily.
3. With an online community, you’re responsible for your own product tester “customer support” and handling all shipping and logistics–an undertaking that can quickly spiral into complicated, time-consuming, and manual back-and-forth.

The best way to avoid these kinds of errors is to work with an IHUT provider that handles these components day in and day out. When your IHUT provider:

• Owns their own community of testers, and invests in growing their numbers to reflect national demographics and keeping testers engaged,
• Owns their own shipping and logistics solution so they manage all communications with the warehouse(s), shipping providers, and product testers,

you can assure a level of quality that’s only possible when you leave these pieces to professionals.

How to track and measure IHUT success

One big measure of the benefit of IHUT is the disasters you avoided by conducting an IHUT. Many CPG and retail brands don’t realize that tech-enabled, cost-effective, and streamlined IHUT are even an option, since historically it has been challenging. Unfortunately for those brands, the cost of skipping in-home usage testing can become painfully apparent with failed market launches or consumer rejection.

For those brands that conduct an IHUT only to be met with negative feedback or clear shortcomings to the product, the value is clear–thankfully, fixable features were discovered in time to adjust formulation before going to market.

There’s more to measure than the potential disasters you avoided–there’s also everything you gained by conducting an IHUT, too. 

Sensory insights are an easy measure of success. When an IHUT, for example, shows that consumers find your soda too sweet across the board, you know you’ve done the right thing by fielding an IHUT.

Claims validation is another extremely tangible demonstration of IHUT value. First and foremost, you want to create a product that achieves an intended effect. (For example, if you are building a foundation that leaves your skin “dewy all day,” you need validation from consumers across different skin types.) This validation also gives you and your teams the power to craft more compelling messaging with claims you are confident will hold up to scrutiny thanks to the IHUT you conducted.

Pack testing is yet another means of straightforward validation possible with a simple IHUT. That could mean anything from consumer testing of usability, durability, kid-friendliness, or perceived sustainability–but whatever the case, it gives you the data necessary to go to market with packaging as appealing and functional as the product itself.

Whatever insights you need to answer your business questions, you’ll want your data in two parts: 

• Quickly digestible insights that you can share immediately with your team and stakeholders to make business-critical decisions
• The full dataset, including and photos or videos with additional qualitative feedback, for post-project data digging

With Highlight, customers automatically receive a Scorecard upon IHUT completion–a comparison of key metrics your survey tested for, including statistical significance so you know what data matters versus what doesn’t.

Highlight users can also download their complete crosstabs spreadsheet as well as any photos submitted by product testers during the IHUT.

With access to both insights and the full data, teams of every size have what they need to go to market with confidence. If you are a lean team, you can quickly action Scorecard insights. If you have the headcount, you may want to action the Scorecard insights while other members of your team continue their exploration of the data in the crosstabs spreadsheet.

Thanks to what is now possible with a modern approach to IHUT, teams of all sizes, CPG verticals, and business goals can access the data insights they need to create products people love.

Want to learn more about how IHUT can transform your product innovation?