Foundational Research
What do our customers actually need?
Understand your market before making big bets. Uncover the needs, perceptions, jobs-to-be-done, and opportunity spaces that should shape your strategy, backed by rigorous analysis of hundreds of customer interviews.
Discuss your projectWhen clients come to us for Foundational Research
- You're entering a new market or category and need to understand the landscape before investing
- Internal debates about what to build are dragging on without customer evidence to resolve them
- Your product roadmap is driven by the loudest internal voices rather than quantified customer needs
- Executive leadership is making strategic decisions based on anecdotes rather than systematic evidence
- You need a comprehensive view of customer needs, perceptions, and competitive positioning to inform your annual planning
- You've collected a lot of customer feedback but don't have the frameworks to turn it into a strategic direction
What you get
Theme prevalence analysis
The most common themes in customer language, quantified by how frequently they appear across segments.
Jobs-to-be-done opportunity scores
Quantified scores combining importance and satisfaction for every customer job, showing where the highest-value opportunities are.
Need-state mapping
A structured view of what customers need, organized by importance and current satisfaction, with a frequency-severity matrix of prioritized pain points.
Perception landscape
How customers perceive your brand, product, and competitors in their own language.
Segment profiles
Distinct customer segments defined by their needs, behaviors, and attitudes, with sizing estimates.
Forces of progress analysis
Push, pull, anxiety, and habit forces that drive switching behavior and adoption decisions.
Strategic opportunity summary
Prioritized recommendations for where to focus based on the patterns in the data.
How we do it
Foundational Research is the broadest of our service lines. It is designed for situations where you need to understand a market, a customer base, or a competitive landscape before making specific product or pricing decisions. It combines exploratory research with Jobs-to-be-Done analysis in a single engagement.
Our proprietary research platform conducts 100-300 interviews following a custom protocol designed by our PhD researchers, blending AI-moderated conversation with structured survey questions in a single participant experience. The interviews explore needs, perceptions, behaviors, and competitive alternatives in depth. Because our platform combines both methods, we achieve the scale of quantitative research and the depth of qualitative research simultaneously.
The analysis applies thematic analysis, JTBD opportunity scoring (importance x satisfaction), clustering, and quantification frameworks to transform interview data into clear, actionable findings. The result is not a stack of transcripts. It is a structured, quantified view of your market with specific product and strategic recommendations.
Timeline and investment
Timeline: Most Foundational Research engagements are completed in 2-4 weeks, depending on scope and sample size.
Investment: Typical investment: $40,000-$100,000, depending on the number of interviews, segments, and depth of analysis.
Focused studies with a single customer segment and a targeted set of questions sit at the lower end. Comprehensive market landscapes with multiple segments, JTBD analysis, and competitive assessment sit at the upper end.
Common questions about Foundational Research
How is this different from a focus group?
Focus groups involve 6-10 people in a room for 90 minutes. Our approach conducts 100+ in-depth interviews, each adapted to the respondent, producing both the depth of qualitative research and the scale to identify patterns with confidence.
Does this include Jobs-to-be-Done analysis?
Yes. JTBD opportunity scoring is a core component of our Foundational Research. We quantify which customer jobs are underserved by combining importance and satisfaction scores, giving you a prioritized view of where the highest-value product opportunities are.
How many interviews do you conduct?
A typical study includes 100-300 interviews through our proprietary platform, which blends AI-moderated conversation with structured survey questions. This volume ensures statistical reliability while capturing the nuance that qualitative research provides.
What types of questions can Foundational Research answer?
It covers a wide range: What do customers need? How do they perceive our brand vs. competitors? What are their biggest frustrations? What language do they use to describe their problems? Which jobs are underserved? Where are the unmet needs? It is designed to give you a comprehensive market understanding.
Can we use the findings to inform a follow-up conjoint or brand study?
Yes. Foundational Research is often the first phase in a larger engagement. The findings identify the most important themes, segments, and opportunities, which then inform the design of a more targeted conjoint or brand measurement study.
What does the deliverable look like?
You receive a strategic report with quantified theme analysis, JTBD opportunity scores, segment profiles, a perception landscape, and prioritized recommendations. We present findings live and provide the underlying data for your team to explore further.
How long does it take?
Most engagements are completed in 2-4 weeks from kickoff to deliverable, depending on scope and the number of interviews.