7 iHUT (In-Home Usage Testing) Best Practices by Jerry W. Thomas

Companies committed to rigorous iHUTs and continuous product improvement can, in most instances, achieve product superiority over their competitors.

This superiority, in turn, helps build brand share, magnifies the positive effects of all marketing activities (advertising, promotion, selling, etc.), and often allows the superior product to command a premium price.

iHUTs are used for a number of important purposes:

• To achieve product superiority over competitive products.
• To continuously improve product acceptance as consumer tastes evolve over time.
• To monitor the potential threat levels posed by competitive products.
• To reduce costs of product formulations and/or processing methods, while maintaining product quality.
• To measure the effects of aging upon product quality (shelf-life studies).
• To monitor product quality from different factories and through different channels of distribution.
• To predict consumer acceptance of new products.

iHUT Best Practices

There are several recommended best practices to achieve accurate and actionable consumer product testing results are several:

A Systems Approach. The methods and procedures of iHUTs should be a standardized system, with standard operating procedures, so that every like product is tested exactly the same way, including:

• Identical product preparation, product age, packaging, and labeling of test products.
• Identical questionnaires (of course, parts of the questionnaire must be adapted to different product categories).Identical sampling plans from iHUT to iHUT.
• Identical data preparation and tabulation methods.
• Similar analytical methods.

Normative Data. As products are tested over time, the goal is to build normative databases, so that successive iHUTs become more meaningful and more valuable. The normative data, or norms, continually improve a company’s ability to correctly interpret its iHUT scores.

Same Research Company. Use one research company for all of your iHUTs. This is the only way you can make sure all tests are conducted in exactly the same way.

Real-Environment Test. If a product is typically used at home, it should be tested at home. If the product is consumed in restaurants, it should be tested in restaurants, and so on. In general, this kind of “real-environment” test will always produce the most accurate results. For store-bought food products, an iHUT is almost always the most accurate and most predictive of future success.

Relevant Universe. Sampling is a critical variable in iHUTs. For new products or low-share products, the sample should reflect, or represent, the brand-share makeup of the market. For well-established, high-share (or highly differentiated) products, the sample should contain a readable subsample of that product’s users and a readable cell of nonusers. If the product category is underdeveloped (e.g., a relatively new category), then the sample should also include nonusers of the category, as well as users. And if a company’s brand share is very low, it’s important to assign more weight (or importance) to the opinions of nonusers of the brand. If brand share is very high, then what brand users think is most important.

Critical Measures. Product performance and quality must be defined from the consumer’s perspective, not the manufacturer’s. What aspects of the product are truly important to consumers? These critical variables must be identified for each product category (typically, with focus groups or depth interviews) and incorporated into the standardized iHUT system.

Careful and Cautious. The formulation of an established product should never be changed without careful testing and evaluation of the new formulation. Once you are sure you have a better product based on iHUT, introduce the “better” product into a limited geographic area for a reasonable time period (several product repeat purchase cycles). Then, and only then, roll the new product out to all markets. The smaller the market share, the greater the risks that can be taken with a new formulation. The larger the market share, the more conservative one should be in introducing a new formulation.

Ultimate Advantage

The ultimate benefit of iHUTs is competitive advantage. Creating and maintaining a better product is the surest way to dominate a product category or an industry. Companies dedicated to ongoing IHUTs can achieve and sustain product superiority. Companies that ignore the learning and guidance from iHUTs, on the other hand, may wake up one morning to find themselves on the brink of extinction due to a competitor who has built “a better mousetrap.”

Decision Analyst's Product Testing Resources

• Car Clinics (The Head-To-Head Contest)
• Direct Comparison Product Testing
• Maintaining Product Quality In The Face Of Rising Costs
• Product Testing In The "Real World" With IHUTs (recorded webinar)
• Product Optimization Services

For more information, please contact: Bonnie Janzen , President, at [email protected] or (817) 701-7178 or Felicia Rogers , Executive Vice President, at [email protected] or (817) 640-6166.