Market Research & Insight

A Mintel or IBISWorld report tells you what a market looks like in general. It cannot tell you whether your specific proposition will land with your specific buyers. We start from the decision you have to make (enter, exit, price, acquire, expand) and design research backwards from it. That usually means speaking to your actual prospects, your lost deals, your channel partners and your competitors' customers. Syndicated reports are useful background and we will read them so you do not have to. They are rarely sufficient evidence on their own when a board is asking why you believe what you believe.

We choose interviews when the question is "why", "how" or "under what conditions". We choose a survey when the question is "how many" or "what proportion", and only when the population is reachable at sensible cost. Most strategic decisions sit in the first camp: pricing logic, buying triggers, switching costs, objections, competitor positioning. Twenty well-chosen interviews with directors who actually sign the cheque will move a board further than two hundred online responses from job titles you cannot verify. If a decision genuinely needs incidence rates, we run a tight quantitative panel afterwards, sized to the call you are making.

Credibility comes from two things: who you spoke to, and whether the findings converged. For qualitative work, fifteen to twenty senior interviews across the right segments will normally reach saturation; new interviews stop producing new themes. We name every respondent's role, sector and relevance in the report so the reader can judge weight for themselves. For quantitative work, we size to the precision the decision actually needs, not to a round number that looks reassuring. A board does not need plus or minus two percent on a question where plus or minus ten would still give the same answer.

Research answers questions about demand, willingness to pay, competitor behaviour and adoption barriers. Modelling translates those answers into revenue, cost, cashflow and sensitivity. The handoff point is usually when someone asks "and what does this mean for the P&L, the funding gap or the valuation". At that point we bring in GIVE Analytics, our sister practice, inside the same engagement plan and the same partner relationship. You do not re-brief, you do not re-contract, and the research assumptions flow straight into the model with full traceability. If your work needs investment-grade numbers from day one, we scope both together upfront.

Yes, and we write it for that audience from the first page. Every claim in the report is sourced: which interview, which question, which dataset, which assumption. Market sizing is shown with a range and a sensitivity, not a single hopeful number. Where evidence is thin, we say so plainly rather than pad. We have sat on the other side of the table reading other people's research, and we know what an experienced non-exec or investment committee will challenge. The report is designed to survive that meeting: defensible methodology, named sources, transparent limitations, and a clear line from evidence to recommendation.

A focused qualitative study (fifteen to twenty interviews, competitor scan, sized market, board-ready report) typically runs six to eight weeks. Adding a quantitative panel adds two to three weeks. We price on a fixed fee for a defined scope, agreed before we start, with a clear change-control note if the scope shifts. You get one senior partner running the engagement, not a rotating cast of associates, and you pay for the work, not for layers of overhead. If the brief is genuinely uncertain, we will run a short scoping conversation first and price the main phase once the decision is clear.