Market Research Projects & Case Studies

A consumer base the brand no longer fully recognized.

A leading consumer brand was seeing softening engagement among long-standing customers alongside uneven traction with newer cohorts. Internal data showed the shifts clearly, but the underlying reasons, what was changing in attitudes, lifestyles, category usage, and brand perception, were not well understood.

What was at stake.

Upcoming decisions on product development, pricing, communications, and channel investment all rested on assumptions about the consumer that were no longer holding up. Continuing to plan against an outdated view risked misallocating budget and missing the cohorts most likely to drive future growth.

Leadership needed a current, evidence-based understanding of the consumer, framed in a way that activation teams could act on.

A growth target without a clear path to it.

A multinational corporation had set an ambitious multi-year growth target, but the internal strategy debate had stalled. Different functions held different views on where growth would come from: existing markets, adjacent categories, new geographies, or M&A. Each option had advocates, and none had a defensible, evidence-based case behind it.

What was at stake.

Capital allocation, organizational focus, and executive credibility were all tied to the next planning cycle. Choosing the wrong growth vector, or trying to pursue too many at once, would dilute investment and slow momentum at a moment the board was watching closely.

Leadership needed an outside perspective grounded in market evidence, paired with a structured framework for choosing.

Growth ambitions outpacing local knowledge.

A multinational corporation was executing a multi-region growth program spanning North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Headquarters had a clear strategic ambition, but the on-the-ground reality of each market, the buyer behavior, competitive structure, regulatory nuance, and channel economics, varied widely and was not fully understood centrally.

What was at stake.

The program involved significant capital allocation across more than a dozen countries, with go, no-go, and sequencing decisions tied to a fixed timeline. Acting on assumptions developed in the home market risked misreading local demand, underestimating local competitors, and stalling entry in priority geographies.

Leadership needed a single, comparable evidence base across markets, delivered to a consistent standard, that strategy and country teams could both trust.

A competitive landscape moving faster than the reporting cycle.

A global technology leader was operating in a category where competitor moves on pricing, product features, partnerships, and messaging were unfolding week to week. The client's existing competitive intelligence relied on quarterly readouts that were often outdated by the time they reached commercial teams.

What was at stake.

Sales, product, and marketing leaders were making pricing, positioning, and roadmap decisions without a current view of what the competitive set was doing. Deals were being lost on talk tracks the client did not know competitors were running, and product teams were being surprised by feature launches already in market.

Leadership needed a continuous intelligence capability, not another quarterly report.

A high-stakes expansion with incomplete visibility.

A Fortune 500 company was evaluating a strategic expansion into an adjacent category and geography where its existing competitive intelligence was thin. Internal teams had a working hypothesis on the opportunity, but the underlying market structure, competitive set, channel dynamics, and customer expectations were not well mapped.

What was at stake.

The decision involved meaningful capital commitment, executive sponsorship, and a board-level milestone. Moving forward on partial intelligence risked overpaying for entry, misjudging the competitive response, or building a proposition that did not match how the market actually bought.

Leadership needed a defensible, board-ready view of the opportunity, the competitive landscape, and the conditions for winning.

Demand signals breaking down.

A global consumer goods manufacturer was operating in a category where demand patterns had become harder to read. Post-pandemic shifts in consumption, channel migration, promotional volatility, and new entrants had eroded the predictive power of the client's existing forecasting models.

Stock-outs in fast-moving SKUs were running alongside overstock in others, with margin and working capital both under pressure.

What was at stake.

Annual production planning, trade promotion investment, and inventory commitments across multiple markets all depended on a forecast the business no longer trusted. Leadership needed a more reliable view of demand across SKUs, channels, and geographies, and they needed it in time for the next planning cycle.

A high-stakes launch on the horizon.

A leading global automotive OEM was preparing to launch a new vehicle into a fiercely contested North American segment, with tooling, marketing, and dealer rollout converging on a fixed launch window.

Pre-launch reviews surfaced uncertainty on three fronts: how the design would land relative to competitors, which features would justify a price premium, and how the positioning would translate into purchase consideration.

What was at stake?

In a segment where shoppers cross-shop four to six nameplates, small perception gaps translate directly into share losses. The client needed head-to-head consumer reactions in a controlled environment, before final pricing and trim decisions were locked.

Immediate pain: Netspend needed to overhaul prepaid card packaging and messaging — but traditional packaging tests weren't revealing why consumers select one card over another.

As a leading U.S. provider of prepaid card solutions, Netspend's Head of Research and Insights, Mr. Chris Ogilvie, faced an urgent, familiar problem: packaging and messaging decisions can make or break selection, yet standard approaches miss the deeper motivations. Mr. Ogilvie believed that instead of running only conventional packaging tests, the team had to understand real shopping journeys and how attitudes and values drive choice.

To get actionable answers, Netspend hired Gold Research, a national customer journey mapping and research firm, to conduct market research and customer journey mapping that would uncover the true drivers of selection decisions.

Central question: How can Netspend redesign packaging and messaging to reflect the attitudes and values that actually drive card selection in real shopping journeys — not just pass traditional packaging tests?

Urgent pain point: Carl Sweat, Hooter's new CMO, needed fresh, in‑the‑moment customer feedback from multiple markets over a single weekend so he could present board‑ready insights without relying on stale online surveys.

Hooters was preparing to validate a new fast casual restaurant concept, Hoot’s Righteous Wings (HRW). As an industry veteran, Carl knew conventional online surveys wouldn’t capture the real‑time reactions he needed — impressions, specific likes and dislikes, visit frequency, and direct comparisons with competitors on key dimensions.

The stakes were high: HRW required rapid, reliable in‑market intelligence to decide next steps for HRW and to support an imminent board presentation. The exact trigger for the research was the soft launch of HRW and the need to evaluate customer response across multiple nationwide markets in a very compressed timeframe.

How could Carl rapidly collect authentic, in‑the‑moment customer feedback across several markets using in‑market MRS so the team could make evidence‑based decisions and deliver confidence to the board?

Urgent issue: Friction across digital and in‑restaurant touchpoints was preventing an international restaurant chain from deepening customer relationships and realising growth from digital initiatives.

Under pressure to extend its leadership with customers, the client commissioned research to map customer journeys and answer a single, urgent question: where should they focus to improve experience and business outcomes?

1. Which specific moments that matter exist across the customer journey, and which matter most?
2. Where do these moments occur—digital versus in‑restaurant—and what motivates or blocks digital use?
3. Where are the friction points in the journey and how can they be resolved, addressed or minimised?
4. Who in the industry is doing this well that the client could learn from?
5. What is the business impact of delivering a friction‑free, digitally‑enabled journey and what untapped '10X' opportunities exist from small, targeted changes?

In short: how can the chain identify, prioritise and remove friction across customer journeys to unlock measurable business impact?

Urgent pain: NortonLifeLock is a leader in the identity theft protection space. Its customers were encountering friction and negative emotions during onboarding — risking activation, satisfaction, and long‑term value.

NortonLifeLock wanted to improve the experience customers had after purchase. The team needed to understand the end‑to‑end onboarding and customer journey from purchase to “steady state,” surface the key “moments that matter,” and pinpoint where friction and confusion occur.

We empathized with product, CX, and marketing teams under pressure to represent a new brand while retaining and activating customers. The immediate trigger for research was the corporate evolution/rebrand and a strategic need to redesign onboarding so it supported both customers and the business.

Core challenge: How can NortonLifeLock map the purchase‑to‑steady‑state customer journey, identify and resolve moments that matter and friction points, reduce negative customer emotions, and establish ways to measure and manage the onboarding experience?

Immediate pain point: The client lacked a repeatable, customer-driven way to map journeys—putting its commercial expansion at risk of developing offers that don’t meet customer needs.

We understand the pressure: a large manufacturing and construction company was accelerating its commercial business expansion and needed clear, actionable customer insights. The trigger for this research was leadership’s request for a worked example—an evidence-backed customer experience map and a repeatable approach that could be extended to other vocations and market segments to fuel strategic growth. The work required credible market research and a practical method the organization could deploy broadly.

In short: How do you research and map customer experiences so the findings directly shape new offer development and create a scalable, repeatable customer-journey framework the whole organization can adopt?