| Product Testing
7 iHUT (In-Home Usage Testing) Best Practices
Companies committed to rigorous iHUTs and continuous product improvement can, in most instances, achieve product superiority over their competitors.
iHUTs help companies:
- Improve product acceptance as consumer tastes evolve over time.
- Monitor the potential threat levels posed by competitive products.
- Reduce costs of product formulations/processing methods, while maintaining product quality.
- Measure the effects of aging upon product quality (shelf-life studies).
- Monitor product quality from different factories and different channels of distribution.
- Predict consumer acceptance of new products.
Best Practices
- A Systems Approach. iHUT methods and procedures should be standardized, so that every product is tested exactly the same way.
- Normative Data. Normative databases ensure that successive iHUTs become more meaningful and more valuable.
- Same Research Company. Use one research company for all of your iHUTs to ensure that 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. In general, the “real environment” test will produce the most accurate results.
- Relevant Universe. Sampling is critical. 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 knowing 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?
- Careful and Cautious. The formulation of an established product should never be changed without careful testing and evaluation of the new formulation. The smaller the market share of a product, 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.
Download Our Free iHUT Checklist
Designed to help you achieve product superiority, this checklist outlines the essential steps for executing a rigorous In-Home Usage Test (iHUT).
Download a pdf of our iHut Checklist
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