The Plan Changes. The Standard Doesn’t.
Multi-panel IHUT delivery for Kantar
The Challenge
Some briefs arrive fully formed. This one arrived and kept changing.
Kantar came to Zest with a large-scale, multi-panel IHUT for a major global brand. The study design was complex from the outset: seven distinct consumer panels, each receiving a different combination of own-brand and competitor products across multiple device variants and product configurations. Every panel had its own product mix. Every send had its own timing. And from the first call, it was clear this one would require a different level of operational build.
Then the brief started moving.
The Audience and Methodology
Participants were recruited to a specific behavioural and usage profile across seven panels simultaneously, each built around a different product combination, with own-brand and competitor variants assigned per cell. The IHUT format required participants to use products sequentially in their own homes, with survey access gated by daily passwords to ensure proper spacing between product evaluations.
The logistics behind this, receiving, checking, blinding, coding, labelling and dispatching products across seven panels in staggered waves, was the operational core of the project.
Methodology:
Multi-Panel In-Home Usage Test (IHUT)
Panels:
7 distinct consumer groups, concurrent fieldwork
Services:
Recruitment, product receipt & inventory, blinding & coding, dispatch logistics, staggered panel management, screener scripting, timeline planning
How Zest Delivered
Before a single product moved, Zest built the infrastructure: a staggered dispatch plan mapped to each panel’s send window, product quantity matrices confirmed and reconfirmed as the brief evolved, and timing plans rebuilt from scratch each time the design changed.
And it changed often. Panel 2 shifted from 5 to 10 products mid-planning, requiring a full rebuild of the dispatch schedule. Device quantities increased from 2 to 3 per cell. Flavour combinations were revised. Product quantities fluctuated. Each change was absorbed, recalculated, and communicated back clearly.
The screener sign-off arrived two weeks later than the agreed date. Zest had already squeezed recruitment timelines to compensate, and flagged the risk proactively rather than waiting for the delay to become a problem: 14 days of recruitment instead of 17, with a clear-eyed note that the final dispatch wave may need extending if recruitment ran to the wire. It didn’t. The bank holiday complicated Panel 6 and 7 sends. The offset was calculated, a solution proposed, and the project moved on.
Products arrived at Zest’s Leeds facility, were received, inventoried, checked, blinded, coded, and packed for dispatch in sequence. Every panel went out on schedule.
What This Says About Zest
Complex IHUTs are won or lost in the planning. When the brief is stable, the operations are manageable. When the brief keeps changing, and on a study like this it always does, the only thing that protects the client is a fieldwork team that can rebuild the plan and keep moving without drama.
That’s not a special capability at Zest. It’s the standard.
