Alternative Research vs Home Visits: Are We Cost-Effectively Delivering the Best Insights?

Is it better to observe consumers in the comfort of their homes, or can alternative methods offer the same level of understanding? As market researchers, we're constantly challenged to strike the right balance between immersive, face-to-face engagements and cost-efficiency... But, there is no single answer, and the research method depends on the objective and the approach we seek.
Why Home Visits Have Been the “Gold Standard”... So Far

Historically, home visits or ethnographic research have been the best way to capture consumer insights, and this research method has yielded the most profitable results for market researchers while creating exceptional rapport and uncovering consumers' desires and beliefs. However, the rise of disruptive research methods has given us unprecedented versatility for conducting market research.

New technologies are opening up fresh alternatives that can easily compete with the effectiveness of traditional home visits. For example, virtual platforms, online communities, mobile surveys, and AI are giving researchers a new push to access a larger market sample and new consumers worldwide at lower costs.

Actually, emerging technologies like virtual reality have the potential to unlock a new avenue for conducting ethnographic studies remotely, reducing costs, and obtaining relevant insights in a relatively simple way. Researchers may soon be able to recreate immersive, controlled environments that simulate home settings while maintaining cost efficiency and scalability. This advantage empowers us to conduct much more relevant market research by handling a larger geographic representation that keeps up with today's data-hungry market environment.

Finding the Right Balance Between Home Visits and Emerging Research Methods

Although new technologies sometimes dazzle us, we cannot discard the traditional methods that have worked for decades. So, how we approach the research depends greatly on what we want to find – and both methodologies have advantages:

Home visits

Home visits deliver authentic and nuanced insights. They allow researchers to be part of consumers' daily lives and see subtle details that can go unnoticed. They provide depth and enable us to observe intricate details, emotions, and behaviors in a consumer's natural setting.

This adds tremendous depth to market research and provides some extra data. For example, seeing small details such as facial expressions or body language allows researchers to draw conclusions quickly and confirm the collected data on-site. However, you should also keep in mind that it is resource-intensive and time-consuming,

Alternatives methods

On the other hand, new technologies give us scalability and cost-effectiveness, allowing us to reach much wider audiences and get feedback from potential consumers anywhere in the world. This enables brands to make timely, data-driven decisions.

Modern alternative methods focus more on cost-effectiveness. For example, virtual focus groups help researchers collect insights from geographically dispersed samples, reducing travel and setup expenses while maintaining quality. However, new technology may have limitations in qualitative studies where the researcher's expertise and years of work allow reaching conclusions that machines will not provide.

Consequently, it is pointless to favor one methodology over the other. Each has advantages and disadvantages – and the researcher's experience and objectives determine the research approach. If you are looking for deeper insights and capture even the subtle facial expressions of consumers, home visits are the way to go. But, if you’re conducting a standard market research in which cost-effectiveness is fundamental, you should opt for an alternative methodology.

What We Gain and What We Lose: Are You Looking for Cost-effectiveness or deeper insights?

To achieve depth and breadth in consumer insights, it would be ideal to combine both methodologies - and by blending traditional methods with new technologies, we could provide the most comprehensive insights possible. This would ensure authentic, in-depth understanding while capturing broad perspectives and wider audiences.

However, in the real world, this is not always possible. In most market research studies, new technologies are more than enough to collect data, and home visits can be costly, given the latest research possibilities that technology opens up. Moreover, as technology advances, new trends such as virtual reality and AI will continue to deliver fresh ways to adapt traditional approaches to emerging methodologies.

As a result, it would be a mistake to treat home visits as the first and unique choice to obtain reliable and in-depth consumer data. It would tie researchers to the past and leave aside alternatives that can be just as good as traditional methodologies.

Final Thoughts

Traditional home visits will continue to be valuable tools for researchers. This methodology is also impressive for analyzing the consumer's behavior in their natural environments with highly accurate data. That’s why we must avoid the binary “pro/anti in-home research” stance and instead prioritize insight quality, contextual relevance, and methodological flexibility.

Both approaches offer many advantages for thoroughly exploring qualitative insights... But, as this extra depth of home visits is costly and time-consuming, it is best to leverage new technologies to gain the same insights cost-effectively. New technologies can provide deep, rich, and actionable information at a much lower price tag, making it a viable alternative in an increasingly competitive marketplace where new digital tools are advancing by leaps and bounds.