One of the most exciting developments that I see in the application of AI in the research world is the fact that businesses and organisations are putting their research to good use and making sure it’s no longer sitting on a shelf collecting dust. Increasingly, brands are feeding years of reports, survey data, transcripts and videos into AI-powered knowledge systems, enabling teams to ask questions of it and maximise learnings in seconds. They can quickly check if they have already run research on a topic or specific audience, explore how sentiment has changed over time or quickly ask it the question that is keeping them awake at night. How fantastic is that.
As a practitioner, I’m delighted to know that my research will continue to add value to an organisation long after my project has been presented. Researchers have always talked about projects living beyond the debrief and it feels like these new tools and systems have finally solved one of research’s longest-standing challenges.
However, these systems assume something incredibly important: that the underlying data they rely on can be trusted. Of course, poor data isn’t a new phenomenon, however traditionally it only affects the individual project it relates to. Today the risk is far wider ranging and poor-quality research risks becoming embedded in organisational memory. We are no longer commissioning research and filing it away on a shelf or server, instead, we are using it to train our future decision-making systems.
I’ve been reading a lot recently on whether synthetic data is ‘good enough’ and recent research from STRAT7 run in 2025 and repeated in 2026 explored this very issue. Their work found that, while synthetic data can mirror broad response patterns, it struggles at an individual level. In particular, their research highlighted issues around logical consistency and the ability to create coherent participant-level narratives. In other words, synthetic data may be able to generate responses that sound convincing in isolation, but that does not necessarily mean those responses add up to tell a cohesive story at a participant level.
This got me wondering whether businesses have really thought about the potential risks synthetic data poses. What happens if we contaminate our systems with imperfect / incorrect synthetic data that then becomes a permanent part of an organisations knowledge bank? What happens when we feed a report with questionable data into our research library and that incorrect information has the ability to impact every future question asked of it?
Over time these answers become organisational knowledge and no one remembers where the response was first generated from. To me, this is a very real risk and one that could be incredibly costly if brand / acquisition strategies, NPD, advertising decisions are based on incorrect data. Once that data is put into the research library it’s very difficult, nigh on impossible, to remove it.
Data quality isn’t a new topic, but in a world of AI-powered insight systems it feels more important than ever that clients have confidence to trust the data we are providing. With bots and fraud at a high, we need to be able to validate participants are who they say they are, that their answers reflect lived experience and that their behaviours and attitudes come from real world contexts, because if we can’t verify the voices behind the data, how can we expect clients to trust it and make important business decisions from it?
AI has the potential to unlock decades of accumulated learning and make research more valuable than ever before, but the quality of those future insights will only ever be as good as the data that is fed in. Before we rush to populate systems with every report, dataset or transcript we can find, we should be asking if we are certain that the data we are training it on belongs to real people. If research is to increasingly live forever, we can’t be surprised to know that if we put garbage into our systems, we have to expect to get it back out, again and again and again.
When a major UK energy company wanted to bring its customers directly into two internal conferences, the brief called for more than finding people who ticked the right boxes.
They needed customers with genuine, relevant experiences. People who could talk openly about what had happened, explain the impact it had on their lives and, importantly, feel comfortable doing all of that in front of an audience of 200–300 people.
No hiding quietly at the back of a focus group for this one!
The client wanted to build on previous customer immersion work by giving more colleagues the chance to hear directly from customers and better understand what matters to them at critical moments.
We were tasked with recruiting five customers across two distinct experience groups:
But experience alone wasn’t enough.
Within the power cut sample, we needed to find people whose experiences could bring issues such as unclear or changing timescales, repeated chasing for updates, poor proactive communication and recurring disruption to life vividly into the room.
For connections customers, we were looking for experiences involving areas such as inconsistent standards, unclear points of contact, missed dates, repeated work, confusing costs or poor communication.
Across the whole group, participants needed to have been the primary person dealing with the organisation and, crucially, be confident sharing their story live with a large audience.
The recruitment approach combined customer lists with free-find recruitment, giving us more than one route into what was a tightly defined audience.
Finding the right experiences was the first filter. Finding people able to communicate those experiences clearly was the second.
Once potential participants had been identified, audition calls were built into the recruitment process. These gave the team an opportunity to check that customers were comfortable speaking about their experience, could articulate their story well and would be suited to the unusual format of the sessions.
Because when someone is standing in front of 300 people, “technically fits the screener” isn’t quite enough.
Participants also completed a 20-minute online pre-task ahead of the events, helping prepare them for the session and giving the client richer context around their experiences before they stepped into the room.
With tightly defined customer experiences, two fixed event dates and a live audience waiting at the other end, recruitment needed a little contingency built in.
The project schedule included an early recruitment review to assess progress and decide whether fallback routes were needed, alongside time for replacement recruitment following the audition stage.
That meant potential recruitment challenges could be dealt with while there was still room to manoeuvre, rather than discovering them when everyone was already reaching for the conference lanyards.
The final customer sessions were designed to move customer experience away from charts, scores and second-hand summaries and into something much more immediate: real people telling real stories.
By carefully recruiting participants not only for what they had experienced, but for their ability to confidently bring those experiences to life, the research gave colleagues the opportunity to hear directly from the people behind the customer journey.
When a research agency wanted to get beyond what people said they ate and see what actually happened across a normal week, they came to Acumen to recruit the people who could bring that picture to life.
The project involved a seven-day online community with 12 participants across the UK, designed to explore everyday eating occasions and, more specifically, the role bakery products played within them.
Rather than completing a survey or turning up for a one-off interview, participants would be creating their own mini documentary of the week. That meant capturing eating occasions as they happened, alongside food shopping, meal planning, preparation, snacking and all the assorted rummaging-in-the-cupboard moments that make up real life.
In other words, we weren’t just looking for people who fitted the demographic criteria. We needed people who would actually do the research properly.
The sample needed to provide a broad view of UK households and eating behaviours, with participants spanning four age groups from 18 through to 61+, alongside a carefully balanced mix of gender, ethnicity, socio-economic group, household income, family circumstances and locations across the UK.
We also needed variation in:
All participants needed to be heavily involved in shopping, planning and preparing food within their household, buy bakery products regularly and cover multiple eating occasions each week.
So far, reasonably chunky.
Then came the practical requirements.
Participants had to download and confidently use a mobile research platform, have reliable Wi-Fi and mobile data, feel comfortable filming themselves, and be willing to upload content in the moment, every day, for seven days. Each participant was expected to contribute on at least 20 occasions over the course of the community.
A beautifully balanced sample wasn’t much use if half of it disappeared somewhere around Wednesday lunchtime.
We used free-find recruitment to build the sample around behaviour and suitability rather than relying on a single source.
Screening looked beyond whether somebody technically met the criteria. We also assessed confidence with smartphones, comfort recording selfie-style videos, ability to communicate clearly and, crucially, willingness to commit to a sustained piece of research.
The sample was then carefully managed to make sure the final group offered genuine variety without creating geographical or behavioural clusters.
Before the community began, every participant also attended a short client briefing call so they understood exactly what would be expected of them during the week and had the chance to ask questions before filming started.
That extra bit of preparation mattered. When research asks people to capture real life as it happens, clarity at the beginning helps everything downstream run much more smoothly.
Acumen successfully recruited 12 engaged participants from across the UK who could deliver against both the detailed demographic quotas and the practical demands of the methodology.
Over seven days, the research team was able to see eating behaviour in context: not reconstructed days later or tidied up for an interview, but captured around real shopping trips, meals, snacks, family routines and everyday decisions.
The result was a much richer view of how bakery products fitted into people’s lives, supported by participants who were selected not simply because they matched a screener, but because they could genuinely contribute to the research.
Because sometimes recruitment excellence is finding the right age, income, household and shopping behaviour.
And sometimes it’s finding someone who will still happily film their toast on day seven. 🍞
The great British summer can be difficult to predict.
You might get sunshine. You might get sideways rain. You might experience both while walking from the car to Tesco with your meal deal.
But there is one forecast we’re feeling rather confident about.
The forecast says there’s a 100% chance of quant!
Summer is often treated as market research’s quieter season. Diaries become a patchwork of annual leave, inboxes fill with out-of-office replies and arranging a meeting involving more than three people begins to require military-grade planning.
But while everyone else is trying to work out whether Claire is back before James goes away, consumers are still out there. Shopping, socialising, travelling, trying new things and forming opinions about all of it.
In fact, summer can create some particularly useful conditions for quantitative research.
People often have a little more downtime and greater flexibility in their routines. Longer days and better weather bring more people into high streets, retail parks, shopping centres, attractions and leisure destinations. That creates natural opportunities for people to stop, take part and tell you what they think.
Convenient, really, because opinions don’t tend to take six weeks off. 🤷🏼♀️
Quantitative research is all about gathering measurable information from a larger number of people. It helps businesses understand how many people think, feel or behave in a particular way, identify patterns across different groups and make decisions based on rather more than the opinion of whichever colleague happens to be standing nearest the kettle.
That might involve a national online survey, face-to-face interviews across several locations, product testing, exit surveys or intercept research conducted close to the point of purchase.
And summer can be a very good time to do it.
Of course, there isn’t a golden research rule stating that every quantitative project will perform better between June and August. Research rarely enjoys being that tidy.
The right timing will always depend on the audience, subject and methodology. Research involving teachers, for example, may need a rather different approach from a study speaking to festivalgoers. Good market research begins with understanding who you need to reach and when participation will be most realistic for them.
But in our experience of delivering quantitative market research fieldwork, a change in people’s usual routines can open up valuable opportunities.
Someone with a little time to spare may be more willing to complete an online survey or stop for a face-to-face interview. They’re also likely to give more considered answers than someone simultaneously attempting to board a train, answer an email and locate their left AirPod.
Then there are all those consumers venturing outdoors voluntarily.
When the weather improves, high streets, retail parks and shopping centres tend to become busier. For exit surveys and face-to-face intercept research, that means more opportunities to reach people in the right place and at precisely the right moment.
Instead of asking somebody to remember a shopping experience several weeks later, researchers can speak to them while it’s still fresh. What brought them there? What did they buy? What influenced the decision? What nearly put them off? Did the experience live up to expectations?
It’s real-time feedback from real consumers, gathered before “Ummmm I think it was quite good?” becomes the full extent of their recollection.
Speaking to people in context can also help market research teams include consumers who may be missed by an online-only approach. With trained fieldworkers, carefully designed questions and consistent quality controls, intercept research can gather structured, measurable data across several locations and provide a clearer view of how experiences differ between audiences.
And, with any luck, nobody has to shelter beneath a clipboard while the rain comes in sideways.
Summer also produces behaviours that simply can’t be understood quite as well from a desk in November.
People travel more. They socialise differently. They visit attractions, attend events, eat and drink different things and make purchases they may not consider during the colder months. Brands across retail, leisure, travel, hospitality, food and drink can measure those behaviours while they’re actually happening.
Quantitative research can explore seasonal purchasing habits, responses to summer campaigns, awareness and consideration, visitor satisfaction, event experiences and reactions to new products or concepts.
If summer matters commercially to your organisation, it makes sense to study it in summer. Asking people about their ice cream choices in November may still produce answers, but it does remove some of the atmosphere.
Online quantitative research can work particularly well during this period too. Participants can respond at a time that suits them, whether they’re at home, travelling or enjoying a brief interval in which nobody has asked them to join a video call.
Online surveys can help organisations reach larger or geographically dispersed audiences, compare responses between different groups and measure attitudes, behaviours and preferences at scale. When they’re supported by appropriate sampling, sensible quotas and robust participant verification, they can keep useful evidence moving even while internal diaries are scattered across multiple time zones and caravan parks.
That can make summer more than the awkward pause between two productive periods.
Run the fieldwork now and you can arrive in September with data ready to explore, decisions ready to make and something considerably more useful than a novelty fridge magnet. This is particularly valuable when autumn planning, campaign development or product decisions are already waiting in the wings.
Naturally, a sunny day does not replace a sound methodology.
Good quantitative research still requires a clearly defined research question, the right audience, carefully written and unbiased questions, reliable recruitment, appropriate quotas and consistent fieldwork. It needs proper quality checks, ethical data handling and a plan built around the decision the research is meant to support.
Timing creates the opportunity. Good research design turns responses into evidence you can trust.
At Acumen Fieldwork, we plan every quantitative research project around the people our clients need to reach and the practical realities of reaching them properly.
Sometimes that means speaking to consumers online across the UK. Sometimes it means trained fieldworkers working across several physical locations. Sometimes it means catching people at the point where their experience is most relevant, before they’ve had time to forget the detail or become distracted by lunch.
There is no single template for getting it right. The methodology should always follow the research question, rather than being chosen because it looks fetching in sunglasses.
But with the right audience, approach and fieldwork team, summer can be an excellent time to gather consumer opinions, measure real-world behaviour and build a clearer picture of what people are doing, and why it matters.
So, while the British weather remains anyone’s guess, the research outlook is looking rather more promising.
If you have a quantitative research project brewing this summer, speak to Acumen Fieldwork. We’ll help you reach the right people, choose the right approach and gather reliable answers at scale; whatever the weather decides to do.
There is a moment on most fieldwork projects when recruitment stops looking quite so straightforward.. The brief might seem simple enough at first. Then the audience becomes more specific, the criteria tighten, the timelines shrink, or the people we need to speak to turn out to be rather harder to find than anyone hoped.
And that’s where our team gets excited!
We are incredibly pleased to share that Acumen Fieldwork has been named a finalist for Recruitment Excellence at the MRS Oppies, recognising our overall work in market research recruitment. 🥳
It is a category that means a great deal to us because recruitment sits at the heart of what we do. It’s not just “the bit before the research starts”. It’s the work that shapes everything that follows.
Behind every strong interview, focus group or research session is a long trail of conversations, decisions and judgement calls. There are screeners to unpick, audiences to understand and plenty of questions that cannot be answered by ticking a box on a form.
Does this person genuinely fit the brief? Will they feel comfortable contributing? Have we understood their experience properly? Is there something in the criteria that looks fine on paper but may cause problems further down the line?
The best recruitment often comes down to noticing those things early. Sometimes that means challenging part of a brief. Sometimes it means changing the way we are looking for people. Sometimes it means picking up the phone, having a proper conversation and listening carefully to what is actually being said.
It also means knowing when to be honest.
Research recruitment is rarely improved by pretending everything is easy. Some audiences are difficult to reach. Some projects need more time. Some projects are sensitive. Some criteria create tensions that need to be discussed. Our job isn’t to nod enthusiastically and hope for the best. It’s to spot the risks, explain them clearly and find a practical way forward.
A lot of this brilliant work happens quietly.
It happens in the follow-up calls that confirm someone is right for the research. In the regular updates that keep clients informed. In the team conversations where we compare notes, test assumptions and decide whether a recruit feels right rather than merely looks right on a spreadsheet.
It also happens in the way participants are treated. People are giving us their time, their opinions and, in many cases, personal experiences that are not always easy to share. We want them to feel informed, respected and looked after from their first conversation with us to the moment the project is complete. That care matters. Not just because it creates a better experience, but because people who feel comfortable and valued are far more able to contribute openly to the research.
Being named a finalist feels like recognition of all those small, careful decisions that rarely make it into the final debrief but have a huge influence on the quality of the work. It recognises our recruiters, project managers and wider team, who keep asking questions, solving problems and refusing to settle for “close enough”.
We are very proud to be finalists.
When our client needed to recruit mental health professionals for a pilot study exploring attitudes towards AI, the challenge was not simply finding people with the right job titles.
The research required clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors, therapists, mental health nurses and sex therapists, but professional experience was only one part of the brief. Participants also needed to represent a broad spectrum of AI knowledge, engagement and optimism, from those already using AI regularly to those who remained cautious about its role in healthcare and society.
Recruiting across such a varied group of mental health professions was already a detailed brief, particularly for some of the more specialist roles.
However, the most significant challenge emerged during screening. Mental health professionals were generally more familiar with and engaged in AI than the study required, meaning participants with lower levels of AI knowledge, interaction and optimism were much harder to find.
The team was therefore not only recruiting by profession and experience, but balancing the sample according to several attitudinal measures, including:
A strong sample needed to include genuine differences of opinion, rather than a group of professionals who all viewed AI through a broadly similar lens.
Acumen combined several recruitment methods, including its in-house database, targeted social media activity and detailed desk research.
As the early responses began to reveal a strong concentration of AI-engaged professionals, the recruitment strategy was adapted. Rather than continuing to source from the same channels and hoping for different results, the team refined its targeting to reach professional groups more likely to provide the underrepresented perspectives.
This included focusing outreach on older professionals and exploring more rural practices. The age-based targeting proved particularly effective, helping the team identify participants with the more cautious and less AI-engaged viewpoints needed to balance the pilot cohort.
Throughout the project, recruitment was continuously reviewed against the study’s attitudinal requirements, allowing the team to adjust sourcing activity as patterns emerged.
Within a two-and-a-half-week recruitment window, Acumen delivered a pilot sample that reflected the required mix of mental health professions and attitudes towards AI.
The client was pleased with the quality and balance of the participants recruited and subsequently commissioned Acumen to support the main study, expanding the project to 150 participants across the UK, including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The larger study required the team to scale the approach considerably while continuing to manage the same complex balance of professional roles, geographical representation and AI attitudes.
For research exploring a rapidly developing subject such as AI, demographic diversity alone is not enough. If participants share similar levels of awareness, confidence or enthusiasm, the findings risk reflecting only a narrow section of the intended audience.
By treating attitudes as a core recruitment requirement rather than an additional screening detail, Acumen helped ensure the research could capture a more meaningful range of professional perspectives.
The project demonstrates how responsive sourcing, careful screening and a willingness to rethink the recruitment strategy can turn a difficult pilot brief into a scalable national study.
“They liked it.”
Excellent. Put the champagne on ice, alert the retailers and prepare the warehouse.
Except, unfortunately, likes are not legal tender.
Someone can find a product interesting, appreciate its packaging and agree that it is a good idea without ever intending to spend money on it. They may even genuinely believe they would buy it, right up until they are faced with the price, their usual brand and the inconvenience of trying something unfamiliar.
That is why purchase intent research needs to explore considerably more than whether people respond positively to an idea.
The difference between “quite nice” and “add to basket” can be an expensive one.
Purchase intent research explores how likely consumers are to buy a product or service, together with the reasons, circumstances and barriers influencing that decision.
It is often used during concept testing, product development, pricing research and demand assessment. Depending on the stage of development, participants might be shown a written proposition, product mock-up, packaging design, prototype or finished product.
A purchase intent survey may ask respondents how likely they are to buy the product within a particular period. Qualitative research can then explore what sits behind that answer: what the product would replace, when it might be used, how it compares with alternatives and what could prevent the purchase.
Purchase intention is useful information. It simply should not be mistaken for a guaranteed sale.
Research by Morwitz, Steckel and Gupta found that the relationship between stated intentions and purchasing varies according to factors including the type of product, how far into the future the purchase might happen and how specifically the question is asked. Their analysis found that intentions were more closely related to behaviour for existing products than new ones, and for shorter rather than longer timeframes. Columbia Business School summarises the research here.
In other words, context matters. Rather a lot.
It is easy to like a product when no money has to change hands.
The decision becomes more realistic once the price is introduced. Consumers begin comparing the proposed product with familiar alternatives and considering whether its benefits justify the cost.
“I like it” may therefore mean “I have no immediate objection to it”, rather than “I would choose this over something I already know and trust”.
That distinction is unlikely to make it onto the celebratory slide, but it is considerably more useful.
A concept shown in isolation receives the participant’s full attention. In real life, it must compete with other products, established habits, promotions, budgets and a shopper who may be thinking about what to have for tea.
Research into two dairy snack products found that purchase-intention ratings were associated with subsequent purchasing, but the strength of that relationship depended on how the product was presented and whether participants had tasted it. The study examined both packaging-led expectations and the experience of trying the product, demonstrating why the conditions surrounding an intention measure matter. The study is published in Food Quality and Preference.
Purchase intent research should therefore recreate the decision context as realistically as the project allows.
Ask, “Do you like this idea?” and participants will tell you whether they like it.
That answer does not automatically reveal:
General approval is one measure. It should not be expected to do the work of seven.
Someone may intend to purchase but find that the product is unavailable, difficult to use, too expensive at that moment or less appealing than another option.
The Theory of Planned Behaviour distinguishes intention from the level of control somebody has over performing the behaviour. Attitudes and intentions matter, but practical constraints can still prevent action. Professor Icek Ajzen’s guidance specifically discusses this intention–behaviour gap and the role of perceived and actual control. Read the academic overview.
For brands, this means the barrier may not be the product itself. Distribution, accessibility, timing, price or the buying experience may all interfere between positive intent and completed purchase.
There is no single question that can predict the future perfectly. Strong purchase intent research combines different measures and considers how closely the research resembles the real decision.
The results are only useful if the participants could credibly buy the product.
A broad sample may be appropriate during early exploration, but more developed concepts often require tighter audience criteria. Current category behaviour, purchasing responsibility, frequency, brand usage and life circumstances may all affect whether somebody is genuinely relevant.
Recruitment should therefore reflect the intended market without becoming so narrow that the research relies on a mythical consumer who meets 19 separate criteria and is free next Tuesday.
Concept materials should give participants enough information to make an informed judgement. They should not read like an advertising campaign assembled to make disagreement feel unreasonable.
Present the core proposition, benefits, format and relevant supporting information consistently. If one concept needs three paragraphs of explanation while another makes immediate sense, that difference is itself useful evidence.
Purchase intent without a price can exaggerate enthusiasm because the participant is assessing desirability without making a trade-off.
Testing a realistic price helps distinguish general interest from perceived value. It also allows researchers to explore what participants would expect to receive for that amount and which alternatives they would consider.
Products are not chosen in isolation. Showing relevant alternatives, asking what the concept would replace or exploring the participant’s most recent category purchase can produce a more grounded response.
Questions might include:
The aim is not to interrogate enthusiasm until it disappears. It is to understand whether that enthusiasm can survive contact with reality.
Quantitative purchase intent research can measure the proportion of an audience expressing different levels of interest and compare responses between concepts, segments or price points.
Qualitative research helps explain why those differences exist. It can uncover misunderstandings, emotional reactions, category habits and barriers that are difficult to capture through a rating alone.
Neither approach is automatically superior. The right method depends on the decision the research needs to support.
Purchase intent research can help teams:
It cannot guarantee sales or reproduce every influence operating in the real market.
Competitive activity can change. Distribution may vary. Economic conditions shift. A consumer who fully intended to buy your product may arrive at the supermarket and discover that their usual brand is half price.
The objective is not certainty. It is a better-informed decision and a clearer understanding of the assumptions carrying the most risk.
The quality of purchase intent research depends partly on the questions and stimulus, but it also depends on speaking to the right people.
Relevant participants bring genuine category experience, realistic comparisons and a meaningful understanding of the purchase. Engaged participants are also more likely to explain their hesitations rather than offering the quickest agreeable answer available.
Acumen Fieldwork supports research teams with consumer recruitment and fieldwork delivery across qualitative and quantitative studies. From broad consumer audiences to tightly defined customer groups, we help put the right people behind the answers.
Because “I can see why someone would buy it” is certainly feedback.
It just may not be the feedback you were hoping for.
Online fraud is changing quickly. As artificial intelligence, deepfakes and increasingly sophisticated scams reshape the threat landscape, understanding how the public perceives and responds to fraud has become more important than ever.
Acumen Fieldwork was commissioned to recruit participants for a qualitative research study exploring how people understand the evolution of online fraud, from past experiences and current concerns to the risks they expect to see in the future.
The client required 10 participants for a two-hour, face-to-face workshop in Central London.
The group needed to reflect a broad mix of public perspectives, with participants balanced across gender, age, ethnicity, socio-economic background and occupation.
All participants were required to:
Those working in banking or IT were excluded to ensure the discussion reflected the views of the wider public rather than people with specialist professional knowledge.
Meeting the demographic quotas was only one part of the brief.
The research required participants who had enough digital experience and awareness of fraud to contribute meaningfully, without bringing professional expertise that could influence or dominate the discussion.
The sample also needed to include people from five different age groups, ranging from 18 to over 60, while maintaining an even gender split and a broad mix of backgrounds and occupations.
This meant the recruitment process needed to look beyond surface-level eligibility and consider how each participant would engage with a complex, sensitive and fast-moving topic.
Acumen managed the recruitment using a free-find methodology, screening each participant against the full demographic, behavioural and attitudinal criteria.
Our screening explored how frequently participants used the internet, the range of activities they completed online and their existing awareness of fraud.
We also assessed their confidence in discussing unfamiliar or emerging issues, including AI-enabled scams and deepfake technology, as well as their ability to express their views clearly within a workshop environment.
Alongside recruitment, Acumen managed participant communications ahead of the session, including consent documentation, attendance information and identification requirements.
A balanced group of 10 London residents was recruited for the workshop, representing a broad range of ages, backgrounds, occupations and levels of online experience.
The project demonstrates Acumen’s ability to recruit for complex research where participant quality matters just as much as demographic fit. By combining detailed quota management with thoughtful behavioural screening, we recruited a varied group equipped to contribute meaningfully to a sensitive and rapidly evolving subject.
Acumen Fieldwork supports qualitative and quantitative research across complex, sensitive and emerging subject areas.
From carefully balanced public samples to more specialist audiences, our recruitment team can help you find participants who meet the brief and bring genuine value to the research.
Artisan Sparkling Gravy. Rich, comforting and lightly carbonated.
It looks premium. The packaging is beautiful. Someone, somewhere, has already suggested a truffle edition.
There’s just one rather important question: does anybody actually want it?
According to NielsenIQ, more than 80% of FMCG product launches fail. That’s a fairly expensive way to discover that people didn’t understand the proposition, wouldn’t pay the price, couldn’t see how the product fitted into their lives or thought the packaging looked like something their nan would keep plasters in.
Market research can’t guarantee that a new product will succeed. What it can do is expose the assumptions, unanswered questions and potential problems before you’ve committed the campaign budget and ordered 40,000 units.
And a slightly bruised idea is considerably cheaper than a failed launch.
There’s rarely one dramatic, boardroom-silencing reason. More often, it’s a collection of smaller issues that weren’t picked up early enough.
The product might solve a problem that isn’t especially important to its intended audience. The concept could be strong, but the proposition unclear. The price might feel out of step with the perceived value, while the packaging may attract attention for all the wrong reasons.
Sometimes, the product itself is perfectly good but struggles because the wrong audience has been targeted, the messaging doesn’t land or the launch takes place in a category that has already moved on.
NielsenIQ highlights several factors that can affect FMCG growth strategies, including limited visibility of category performance, insufficient understanding of competitor products, unsuitable retail channels and pricing that falls outside what buyers are prepared to pay.
None of those problems is particularly mysterious after a product has failed. The trick is finding them while you can still do something about them.
Market research for product development should not be a final thumbs-up exercise carried out once every important decision has already been made.
Used properly, it gives teams evidence at several points in the development process. It can help shape the original opportunity, refine the product concept, explore purchasing behaviour and test how the final proposition will perform in the real world.
The precise approach depends on the product, category and stage of development, but product launch research might explore:
This doesn’t mean asking a room full of people, “Do you like our idea?” and waiting hopefully.
People are generally polite. Stakeholders are generally invested. Neither is especially useful if the research has been designed to confirm a decision rather than challenge it.
Good new product development research explores why people respond as they do, what they compare the product with and whether their stated enthusiasm is likely to translate into real behaviour.
Concept testing allows brands to explore an idea before significant time and budget have been committed to developing it.
Participants might be shown different propositions, product benefits, names or use cases. The research can then examine which elements are compelling, which cause confusion and what consumers believe they are being offered.
This is where teams often uncover the gap between the product they think they have created and the one the audience thinks they are looking at.
If a concept takes six paragraphs and a diagram to explain, that’s useful information. If consumers like the general idea but cannot see when they would use it, that is too.
It doesn’t necessarily mean the concept should be abandoned. It may need to be simplified, repositioned or aimed at a different audience. Finding that out early gives you options.
Once the concept has progressed, product testing can explore how well the experience delivers against expectations.
Depending on the category, this may involve testing taste, usability, performance, format, portion size, scent, texture or other product characteristics. Qualitative research can uncover detailed reactions and behaviours, while quantitative research can help measure and compare responses across a larger sample.
Crucially, product testing should be considered alongside the proposition. A premium claim creates premium expectations. A convenience product needs to feel genuinely convenient. If the experience does not deliver what the messaging promises, a polished campaign will only help more people become disappointed by it.
Packaging has quite a lot to do at once. It needs to attract attention, communicate what the product is, convey the right level of quality and help somebody choose it in a busy physical or digital environment.
Packaging research can explore visibility, comprehension, brand fit and standout. It can also reveal unintended associations which may be obvious to consumers but completely invisible to the people who have spent six months reviewing slightly different shades of blue.
The prettiest design in the presentation is not necessarily the one that will work hardest on the shelf.
Testing packaging with the intended audience helps brands understand not just which option people prefer, but what each design communicates and whether the important information is noticed quickly enough.
There is a sizeable difference between liking a product and buying it.
Pricing research helps explore perceived value, acceptable price ranges and the trade-offs consumers make when choosing between products. It can also identify whether a lower price would weaken perceptions of quality or whether a premium position is unsupported by the proposition.
Price should therefore be tested in context. Consumers do not assess it in isolation; they compare it with familiar products, alternative ways of meeting the same need and the amount they believe the purchase is worth to them.
Asking “Would you pay £5 for this?” may provide an answer. Exploring what makes it feel worth £5 provides far more useful consumer insight.
There will always be uncertainty in a product launch. Consumer behaviour changes, competitors move, retailers make decisions and occasionally the market simply refuses to cooperate.
Market research is not a crystal ball, and anyone promising guaranteed success should probably be kept away from both the research budget and the sparkling gravy.
What research offers is a better basis for making decisions. It lets teams test assumptions with the people they expect to buy the product, understand the reasons behind their reactions and improve the idea while improvement is still relatively painless.
Sometimes the research will validate the direction. Sometimes it will identify a few manageable changes. Occasionally, it will tell you that the entire idea needs another look.
That last outcome might not feel like good news in the debrief, but it can be extremely valuable news for the business.
A successful launch involves more than having a good idea. The proposition needs to be understood, the product needs to deliver, the packaging needs to communicate and the price needs to feel justified.
That is a lot to leave to instinct.
Acumen Fieldwork helps research teams and brands speak to the right people throughout the product development process, from early concept testing to product, packaging, pricing and messaging research.
Planning a new product launch? Let us help you find the holes before the market does. We promise to give the sparkling gravy a fair hearing.
