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 — competitive, pricing, and loyalty research 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 inertia — 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 churn you mistook for satisfaction. Research replaces the assumption with a fact and turns the next dollar into an aimed one. We run three kinds — competitive intelligence that shortlists 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 behavior instead of satisfaction — and every study ends in a recommended move, not a report that sits on a shelf.
Competitive research and intelligence — a disciplined read on how your rivals are positioned, priced, and messaged, and, more usefully, where they’re over-extended, generic, or absent. Not a competitor encyclopedia; a shortlist of the gaps you can actually take. It’s the standing input behind a business wargame and behind any serious competitive strategy.
Pricing research — what the market will actually bear, how price-sensitive your category really is, and where a competitor’s pricing is rigid or indefensible. 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 as behavior — price tolerance, unprompted advocacy, share of wallet — so you learn where you have real affinity versus where you have inertia waiting to leak. It’s the methodology that, applied 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 moving the needle — Mark Hope ran market and competitive research at enterprise 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 define the study around that decision and deliberately leave out what won’t change it. The output is a research brief scoped to 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-based competitive intelligence, primary research, or behavioral measurement — 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 over-extended; pricing questions get evidence of what the market will actually bear; loyalty questions get behavioral measures like price tolerance, unprompted advocacy, and share of wallet, 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. The output is a clean, decision-relevant dataset, and it matters because the wrong method produces confident answers to the wrong question.
Read
We turn that data into a read — the interpretation, 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 indefensible; for loyalty, where you have real affinity versus inertia quietly waiting to leak. You get our analysis of what the evidence means for your decision, framed against the question we scoped, not a deck of charts to interpret yourself. The deliverable is a clear read on the landscape, and it matters because data that isn’t interpreted 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 strategy, pricing, or a wargame. 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 methodology that, applied at enterprise 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 as behavior — price tolerance, advocacy, share of wallet — so you see real affinity versus inertia about to leak; it’s the methodology that, applied 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 enterprise 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 engagements run $5,000–$25,000, scoped per study — standalone, or as the front end of a broader strategy or wargame engagement.
Frequently asked questions
What does a market research engagement cost?
Market research engagements run $5,000–$25,000, scoped per study — standalone, or as the front end of a broader strategy or wargame engagement.
What kinds of research do you run?
Three: competitive intelligence that shortlists 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 behavior — price tolerance, advocacy, share of wallet — instead of satisfaction.
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 strategy, pricing, or a wargame so the next dollar you spend is aimed at a fact instead of a guess.
Tell us what you need.
Two minutes. Five fields. Describe what you’re looking for and we’ll get back to you within one business day with a sense of scope, timing, and next steps.
/services/capabilities/market-research/ · Capability 09