This piece of work is part of our two core engines. We don’t sell it as a standalone, one-off service. Every project with Asymmetric starts with the 1-Day Pathfinder Sprint, where we size up your competitors and match this work to your real numbers.
Market Research
You’re about to aim a marketing budget at a market you’ve only assumed you understand, what your competitors are really doing, what your customers actually value, what a price change would do. Every dollar spent on a guess is a dollar a sharper competitor spends on a fact. We get you the read first, research on your competitors, your pricing, and your customers’ loyalty that tells you where to compete and how, so everything after it is aimed.
Replace the assumption with a fact.
Most of your marketing spend gets committed on assumption, about how rivals are positioned, what customers will pay, where loyalty is real versus where it’s just habit, and a budget aimed at a guess loses to a smaller budget aimed at a fact. The cost isn’t only wasted spend; it’s the position you didn’t take because you never saw the gap, the price war you walked into, the customers you lost that you mistook for happy ones. Research replaces the assumption with a fact and turns the next dollar into an aimed one. We run three kinds: research on your competitors that gives you a shortlist of the gaps you can actually take, pricing research that sets price from what the market will bear rather than a cost-plus spreadsheet, and loyalty research that measures what customers do instead of how they say they feel, and every study ends in a recommended move, not a report that sits on a shelf.
Research on your competitors, a disciplined read on how your rivals are positioned, priced, and messaged, and, more usefully, where they’re overextended, generic, or absent. Not a competitor encyclopedia; a shortlist of the gaps you can actually take. It’s the standing input behind sizing up your competitors and behind any serious plan to out-compete them.
Pricing research, what the market will actually bear, how price-sensitive your category really is, and where a competitor’s pricing is rigid or hard to defend. The difference between setting price from a cost-plus spreadsheet and setting it from evidence: a price war you lose versus a position you own.
Customer loyalty research, the measurement most companies get wrong. Satisfaction tells you whether customers are content; it doesn’t tell you whether they’re loyal. We measure loyalty by what customers do, whether they’ll pay a bit more to stay, whether they refer you without being asked, whether they buy more from you, so you learn where you have real loyalty versus where you have habit waiting to leak. It’s the same approach that, used at a billion-dollar services company, cut customer churn nearly in half in a year.
And it isn’t a side service we bolt on. Research is where our founder’s career started getting real results, Mark Hope ran market and competitive research at big-company scale at The Coca-Cola Company, including a customer-loyalty study that became the template for cutting churn ~50% as SVP of Sales & Marketing at Safety-Kleen Systems. We’ve run competitive research market by market for multi-location companies, built go-to-market reads for global brands entering new markets, and treated research, not media, as the decision that comes first. When we hand you a study, it ends in a move.
From question to decision.
Scope
We start by pinning down the exact decision the research exists to inform, a price you’re about to set, a position you’re about to take, a market you’re about to enter, because a study built to be comprehensive answers everything except the question you’re paying it to answer. You tell us the call you’re facing and the budget riding on it; we build the study around that decision and deliberately leave out what won’t change it. What you get is a research brief built around your question, not a fishing expedition. It matters because focus is what separates a read that earns its keep from a report that impresses and then sits on a shelf.
Gather
Then we collect the data with the right method for the question, desk research on competitors, talking to customers directly, or measuring what they actually do, rather than defaulting to whatever’s easiest to run. Competitive questions get a disciplined read on how rivals are positioned and priced and where they’re overextended; pricing questions get evidence of what the market will actually bear; loyalty questions get real measures like whether they’ll pay to stay, refer you unasked, and buy more, not a satisfaction survey. You give us access to what you know and the customers or market we need to reach; we run the gathering. What you get is a clean dataset that speaks to the decision, and it matters because the wrong method produces confident answers to the wrong question.
Read
We turn that data into a read, what it means, not the raw numbers. For competitive work that’s a shortlist of the specific gaps you can actually take; for pricing, where the market’s tolerance and a rival’s pricing are rigid or hard to defend; for loyalty, where you have real loyalty versus habit quietly waiting to leak. You get our take on what the evidence means for your decision, lined up against the question we set, not a deck of charts to figure out yourself. What you get is a clear read on the market, and it matters because data nobody interprets is just cost, the value is in knowing what it tells you to do.
Decide
Finally, every study ends in a recommended move, a price, a position, a market to enter or avoid, that feeds straight into your plan, your pricing, or sizing up your competitors. We don’t hand you findings and wish you luck; we tell you what the research says to do and why, so the next dollar you spend is aimed at a fact instead of a guess. You leave with a decision you can act on and the evidence behind it. It matters because research that stops at insight leaves the hardest part to you; this is the approach that, used at big-company scale, turned a loyalty study into a churn cut of nearly half, because it ended in a move, not a report.
What to expect.
Loyalty measured by what customers do, whether they’ll pay a bit more to stay, refer you unasked, buy more, so you see real loyalty versus habit about to leak; it’s the same approach that, used at Safety-Kleen Systems, cut customer churn nearly in half in a year.
A budget aimed at facts instead of assumptions, backed by research run at big-company scale, the market and competitive work our founder led at The Coca-Cola Company.
A shortlist of the specific competitive gaps you can take and a price set from what the market will bear, every study ending in a recommended move, not a report that sits on a shelf.
Market research runs $5,000–$25,000, priced per study, on its own or as the front end of a broader plan or a competitor stress-test.
Frequently asked questions
What does a market research project cost?
Market research runs $5,000–$25,000, priced per study, on its own or as the front end of a broader plan or a competitor stress-test.
What kinds of research do you run?
Three: research on your competitors that gives you a shortlist of the gaps you can actually take, pricing research that sets price from what the market will bear rather than a cost-plus spreadsheet, and loyalty research that measures what customers do (whether they’ll pay to stay, refer you unasked, buy more) instead of how they say they feel.
Do I get a report or a recommendation?
Every study ends in a recommended move (a price, a position, a market to enter or avoid) not a report that sits on a shelf. It feeds straight into your plan, your pricing, or a competitor stress-test so the next dollar you spend is aimed at a fact instead of a guess.
Every engagement starts with a 1-Day Pathfinder Sprint.
One day, $950 (credited to your first month if you go on to a plan). We go through your real numbers and hand you a ready-to-run 90-day system. Prefer to talk it through first? Book a call with Mark.
/services/capabilities/market-research/ · Capability 09
This piece of work is part of our two core engines. We don’t sell it as a standalone, one-off service. Every project with Asymmetric starts with the 1-Day Pathfinder Sprint, where we size up your competitors and match this work to your real numbers.