Retail market research company

Harness market insights to drive innovation in consumer & retail markets

Aura Awards Winner
Excellence Awards
MRS

Ready your business for change

Retail & FMCG market & customer insight specialists

Achieving sustainable growth in the retail and FMCG market is about “survival of the fittest”. Established brands need to innovate and adapt to stay relevant, while new brands have to fight to stake their place on increasingly-crowded shelves. Immense competition for attention and space has made consistent profitable growth difficult without powerful insights and strategy to help. 

From product innovation to messaging refinement, STRAT7’s customer and market research specialisms help businesses pick their target segments, redefine their strategy and execute brilliantly, supported by commercially-astute, consumer-centric insights. Our experienced team leverages cutting-edge methodologies to deliver actionable insights that drive growth and innovation. Whether you’re a well-established brand or a disruptive startup, we can provide the information you need to propel your success.

awards/finalist in last 5 years
0 +
years av. partnership for top 50 clients
0
client sat score vs industry av. of 7.5/10
0
connected experts across 12 countries
0 +
Green Speech Marks

What our clients say

Our global retail research specialisms

Our comprehensive approach combines market intelligence, consumer psychology, and strategic analysis to help retail businesses thrive in an ever-evolving marketplace.

Understand consumer behaviour, audience segments and market trends to inform your pricing, marketing, and distribution strategies.
By providing valuable insights into consumer needs, preferences, and emerging trends, we empower retail businesses to develop groundbreaking products that resonate with their target audience.

With valuable insights into your market and competitors, you can make informed decisions that drive growth, profitability, and overall business performance.

Developing a new global brand positioning

The importance of customer & market research in the retail industry

Customer and market research is a cornerstone of successful retail operations. Our invaluable insights will help you make informed decisions, stay competitive, and ultimately, drive growth.
By refining your customer experience, tracking and preempting your rivals’ actions and understanding your audience to craft messaging that truly resonates, you can differentiate your brand and ensure long-term success.
Research can reveal how consumers adjust spending habits to handle rising prices, so you can identify opportunities to create or modify products that offer better value, understanding the trade-offs buyers are willing to make.
Identify and anticipate emerging trends and innovate products to match, using research to validate products before launch, reducing the risk of costly failures.
Accurate forecasting can help you anticipate demand peaks and troughs more accurately, so you can adjust production, inventory, and staffing accordingly, avoid excess inventory, and reduce storage costs.

Comprehensive solutions for retail and FMCG service providers

No matter your sector, we can help you thrive, with actionable insights and reliable information on the latest market trends.

Grocery and supermarkets

Learn exactly what your buyers want, and use that knowledge to optimise your product range, improve store layouts and innovate new offerings.

Fashion and apparel retail

Anticipate and capitalise on trends, segment consumers more effectively, and position your brand perfectly by getting a better understanding of your market and its direction.

Health and beauty products

With consumer insights and competitive analysis, you can identify segments that are underserved by current offerings and take steps to corner these niches.

Electronics and appliances

Identify emerging technologies, understand consumer preferences for smart devices, and optimise product portfolios to stay ahead of the curve.

Food and beverage manufacturers

Move with evolving consumer tastes, fine-tune product formulations, and develop innovative products that resonate with your audience’s preferences.

Luxury goods

Elevate your brand with our market research. From product design to customer experience, we’ll help you become the go-to byword for “luxury”.

Why choose STRAT7 for retail and FMCG market research?

A global tech-enabled strategy, insights and analytics agency

Global reach, regional presence

From London to Sydney, and everywhere in between, our international footprint helps us drill down into potential untapped retail markets and territories.

Demonstrated history of success

From IKEA and Asda, to Converse and Axe, we know what it means to support some of the world’s biggest retail brands with their most ambitious projects.

End-to-end strategy

Specialist insight methodologies

With an empathetic, personal touch, we can open doors and gather more detailed and nuanced data on your retail customers that traditional methodologies can’t access.

Helping retail & FMCG companies worldwide

Understanding customers, market, competition & potential

In such a fast-moving industry, knowing where you stand is important, but seeing the direction that things are heading is vital. 

We can help you read the currents and gain an edge over your competitors with actionable market insights and detailed customer research.

maturity graph

Our research methodologies

Capturing strategic insights

Ethnographic research

We immerse our research in your customers’ lived experiences to understand their behaviours, affinities and shifting attitudes on a truly personal level.

Bespoke qualitative and quantitative research

Through sentiment analysis, social listening and AI-powered research, our analysts build up a comprehensive picture of your UX from a customer’s perspective.

Unstructured data synthesis​

Powered by proprietary machine learning, NLP and generative AI, our toolkit makes it effortless to identify trends and extract valuable insights from unstructured data.

Semiotics

By decoding the true meaning underlying signs and sentiments, we help you develop products and marketing campaigns that resonate with customers on a deeper level.

Customer and user experience analysis​

Plotting out each interaction a customer could have with your company, we assess the value of every step on the journey, and determine the “make or break” moments.

Free ebook

The un-dependents: Targeting the consciously child-free consumer

FAQs

What is retail market research?

Retail market research is the systematic gathering, recording, and analysis of data about retail markets, consumers, and competitors. It provides valuable insights that help businesses understand consumer behaviour, market trends, and competitive landscapes to make informed decisions and improve their performance. 

FMCG (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods) market research is a specialised form of market research that focuses on products with a rapid turnover rate, like food, beverages, toiletries, and household goods. These products are typically consumed or used up quickly, leading to frequent repurchases.

Market and customer research can:

  • Help businesses identify and capitalise on emerging trends in rapidly-evolving consumer preferences
  • Provide insights into competitors’ strengths, weaknesses and strategies, so companies can differentiate themselves and gain a competitive edge
  • Make demand forecasting more accurate, so businesses can anticipate consumer spending patterns in challenging economic conditions
  • Inform more effective marketing strategies that resonate with increasingly-fractured audience segments
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec dapibus aliquam lobortis. Maecenas egestas facilisis pulvinar.

Ethnographic research, cultural insights and semiotics all help us refine your messaging to resonate more effectively with your ideal customers; behavioural analysis and customer journey mapping provide insights into how to improve your operations to be more customer-centric, and unstructured data synthesis, surveys and polls and insight communities can help you better understand the impact of any changes you make. 

STRAT7 offers customer research solutions to understand changing consumer behaviours, such as purchasing habits, value perceptions, and sustainability concerns. We can help develop targeted marketing campaigns and optimise sales strategies based on specific customer segments and their evolving preferences, and we can provide insights for optimising offerings and developing new products that resonate with changing customer needs and tastes.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec dapibus aliquam lobortis. Maecenas egestas facilisis pulvinar.

STRAT7 differentiates itself by combining traditional market research with advanced technology and innovative methodologies. We focus on providing actionable insights that drive real business impact.

Our insights and strategies combine deep industry expertise with advanced data analytics and AI. This allows us to scrape and analyse vast quantities of information, to uncover hidden patterns and trends that other research firms may miss.

At the same time, our experienced customer and market research teams can investigate any global market you wish, providing you a solid foundation and understanding of your prospective customer base, on an incredibly detailed and personal level.

Other industries

Talk to the team

Stefan Schafer

Stefan Schafer

Featured content

A bit more about us

Blog

A well trained assistant

Blog

Putting our segment chatbot to the test

We help you understand

Shape your future – where is your future headed and what influences that direction 

Define your difference – what helps you win?

Identify your audience – who are they and what do they expect? 

Galvanise the business – how do you inspire action?

Blog

A well trained assistant

Discover fresh ideas and perspectives

Blog

Lessons in strategy from board games

Case Study

Air Wick

Demystifying consumer motivations and building a cohesive product portfolio