Market research services for small businesses making big decisions

Cost depends on how many questions you need answered, how many markets or competitors are in scope, and above all how much primary research is involved. Desk research and AI-assisted synthesis are relatively efficient, while recruiting and paying people for interviews and surveys, or licensing paid data such as foot traffic or industry reports, adds the most cost. Ongoing monitoring is a smaller recurring scope. We quote after a free consultation, once we know the decision the research has to support.

No, but it makes good research much faster. AI is excellent at finding and summarizing material, clustering thousands of reviews, transcribing and coding interviews, and drafting survey questions. It's unreliable at quoting sources accurately, knowing what changed recently, and representing customers who don't post online, and synthetic respondents are no substitute for real buyers. We use AI for speed and people for judgment, and we cite every source so you can check our work.

Typical projects take 2–6 weeks. A competitor teardown or a desk-based market size can be ready in 1–2 weeks, while projects with surveys and interviews usually take 4–6 weeks. Recruiting the right people sets the pace, especially for hard-to-reach B2B buyers. If you have a deadline, such as a lease decision or a lender meeting, tell us up front and we'll design the research to fit it.

We need the decision you're facing and its deadline, the competitors you already watch, and any past research. For customer research, we need a customer list we're allowed to contact, plus CRM, sales, or support data that shows who buys and why. Expect about 2 hours of leadership time across the project: a kickoff, a check-in, and the readout. We handle survey design, recruiting, interviews, and analysis.

Yes, when it relies on public information and honest methods, which is the only way we work. We use competitors' websites, published prices, reviews, public filings, job postings, the Meta Ad Library, and Google's Ads Transparency Center. We don't misrepresent who we are to get confidential information, access anything behind a login we're not entitled to, or ask anyone to share a former employer's secrets. This isn't legal advice, but those are the lines we hold.

An industry report describes a market, and our research answers your decision. Reports from publishers like IBISWorld or Statista can be useful inputs, and we'll use them when they're worth the cost. But they're broad, can lag the market, and say nothing about your customers or your local competitors. We combine published data with Census and state data, your own sales numbers, and conversations with your buyers.

Yes. We set up AI-assisted monitoring of your competitors' websites, pricing pages, reviews, ad libraries, and job postings, and a person reviews what it finds before anything reaches you. You get a short monthly brief on what changed, why it might matter, and whether we'd respond. Big moves, like a new location, a price cut, or a major promotion, trigger an alert right away instead of waiting for the brief.