Good Housekeeping Research Institute

Founded in 1900 in Springfield, Massachusetts, as the Good Housekeeping Institute Experiment Station for the evaluation of food products and, a few years later, of household appliances, the Good Housekeeping Institute is one of America’s premier consumer-protection and quality-assurance facilities. Products that do not satisfy the requirements of the institute’s product testing and approval programs are not allowed to advertise in Good Housekeeping magazine.

The institute’s work supplies the essential foundation for the Good Housekeeping Consumers’ Refund Replacement Policy, which in every issue of the magazine warrants that “if any product that bears our Seal or is advertised in this issue [of our magazine] … proves to be defective within two years from the date it was first sold to a consumer, we, Good Housekeeping, will replace the product or refund the purchase price.” After Good Housekeeping magazine was purchased by William Randolph Hearst in 1912, the institute moved to New York City, where it was still located at the beginning of the twenty-first century.