Best practices when choosing a method of displaying content?
You want to display a single, featured product on the homepage. I would try using Views to create a Block which you can then include in the Content region on the homepage.

In Views, set the criteria, so you're pulling the appropriate content type. Perhaps you have some kind of "featured" or "sticky" flag. Add that to your criteria as well. Then if you want to restrict it further by taxonomy or sort it by most recently added and restrict the view to a single item, you can do that (see Pager settings; click "Display all items" and adjust settings).

Typically, Views is used to create a Page or a Block. Have yours output a block, then at sitedomain.com/admin/structure/block, locate the new Block and add it to the page wherever you want it.