In-Home Tests Miami

An in-home use test (IHUT) places a product with consumer households for 1-2 weeks and collects structured feedback on how they actually use the product in their real home environment, rather than in a facility. For Miami Hispanic consumers, IHUTs reveal usage behaviours, preparation methods, pantry integration, and product performance under real household conditions that differ substantially from general US market norms. A Venezuelan household in Doral may use a cooking product in ways that a Colombian household in Weston does not, and neither uses it the way a non-Hispanic US household does.

A pantry audit is a structured in-home visit where a trained field researcher photographs and catalogues the contents of a household's pantry, refrigerator, and food storage. In Miami Hispanic households, pantry audits reveal the mix of Latin American heritage brands (Goya, Harina Pan, Polar, Maggi, Knorr Suiza) alongside US mainstream brands, the role of Latin supermarkets versus Publix or Walmart in household sourcing, and category-by-category brand loyalty patterns. Pantry audits are frequently used before in-home product placement studies to establish baseline brand presence.

HRG conducts in-home tests with Venezuelan households in Doral, Cuban-American households in Hialeah and Westchester, Colombian households in Weston and Doral, Nicaraguan and Central American households in Miami-Dade, Puerto Rican households in Broward, and Caribbean diaspora households (Jamaican, Haitian, Trinidadian) in Broward County. Each community has distinct pantry profiles, cooking habits, product use patterns, and incentive preferences that shape IHUT design.

A standard 30-household IHUT in Miami covering product placement, a 1-week in-home period, post-use structured diary or survey, and a brief debrief visit typically runs USD 18,000 to USD 28,000 depending on product category, household targeting difficulty, and deliverables. Pantry audits as standalone studies (10-20 households, 90-minute visit, full photographic catalogue and debrief report) run USD 6,000 to USD 10,000. Contact HRG for a project-specific fixed-price quote.

An IHUT places a product with households for a defined period and collects structured usage feedback. An ethnographic home visit is an observed, open-ended session where a researcher accompanies a household member through their normal routines -- cooking, shopping, product selection -- and documents behaviours without a product-specific brief. Ethnographic visits are used for early-stage category understanding, to map the decision journey before a product brief is developed. HRG offers both, often combining an ethnographic baseline with a subsequent IHUT for product testing.

HRG recruits IHUT households through our South Florida panel database (15,000+ participants across Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach), bilingual community networks, and direct neighbourhood outreach in target areas including Doral, Hialeah, Miramar, and Pembroke Pines. Screeners capture household composition, country of origin, product category usage, income band, and home ownership to match the client target profile. Typical recruitment for 30 households takes 7-10 business days.