---
title: "Digital ethnography of everyday household cleaning | antedote"
description: "Digital ethnography for a household products company: everyday cleaning among users and non-users of a cleaning product, and a screen of early product ideas."
url: "https://antedote.com/explore-our-work/how-households-really-clean/"
author: "antedote"
---

# Reaching households that rarely use a cleaning product

People who rarely buy a product are hard to understand through it. A household products company wanted to grow a cleaning product among them, so we started with cleaning itself, and screened the brand’s early ideas along the way.

**Client**
Household products company

**Industry**
Household cleaning

**Market**
North America

**Kind of work**
Consumer understanding

**Our role**
Digital ethnography of household cleaning, with a screen of early product ideas

## What happened next

The brand went on to test product ideas with consumers.

## The question

The brand wanted to grow one of its cleaning products by bringing in people who used it little or not at all.

Its teams were already gathering product ideas for an innovation review. They needed to know how these people actually clean, what would make room for a new product in that routine, and which ideas deserved to go further.

## Our approach

We made cleaning itself the subject, in a digital ethnography of everyday life at home.

People filmed their everyday cleaning, cleaned on camera without the product, and showed us the products they kept and where. We read it all through behavior first, then through the differences between the user groups.

The same people reacted to the brand’s early product ideas, and we reported that screen first, timed for the brand’s innovation review. This was qualitative work, built to understand how and why people clean, and the screen describes how these participants responded.

## What the team came away with

The brand had the topline screen of its early ideas in time for its innovation review.

A full report followed, bringing together how households clean, an assessment of each idea, and opportunity areas for the brand’s innovation.

Who we heard from

Light, moderate and non-users of the product, in a digital ethnography of everyday cleaning

## Related work

[View consumer understanding case studies](https://antedote.com/explore-our-work/?work=Consumer%20understanding#library)

- Household goods

    ### [Choosing where to start a kitchen and bath brand’s experience redesign](https://antedote.com/explore-our-work/mapping-a-kitchen-and-bath-buying-journey/)

    The brand’s redesign program then asked us to rate eight of its own improvement ideas against the journey.

- Workwear

    ### [Planning a better layer for people who work outside](https://antedote.com/explore-our-work/a-better-layer-for-outdoor-workers/)

    The company later launched a new garment.

**What we do**
[Strategic research](https://antedote.com/what-we-do/strategic-research/)

## Want to understand your customers better?

Bring the question, and we’ll talk through where to begin.

[Talk to us](https://antedote.com/talk-to-us/) · [hello@antedote.com](mailto:hello@antedote.com)

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