Market Research Solutions by Industry
Expert Research, Industry Insights
For 40 years, SMARI has helped businesses navigate change with research that goes beyond industry silos. We combine deep expertise with cross-industry thinking to deliver insights that drive real impact.
Delivering Results to a Diverse Range of Industries
We begin by understanding your organization and research needs, ensuring a custom approach tailored to your brand and industry. We don’t rely on assumptions or standard methods—we embed ourselves in your reality, taking a continuous learning approach. Our high-touch, client-focused process keeps us in step with your goals every step of the way.
Market Research by Industry
B2B
SMARI sets aside a specific approach when working with a B2B product or service. The complexity of this space and decision maker requires a different design and skill set.
Consumer Goods & Services
Consumers are ever changing as is the market. Whether the brand is on the manufacturing, retail or e-commerce side, we have solutions and specific approaches to align with each channel.
Education
Working in education means designing research that takes into account the brand culture, leadership, educators, parents and students. This is a complex puzzle that takes careful planning to ensure each audience shares a voice.
Financial & Professional Services
Creating a suite of financial services and offerings can take careful consideration to ensure both rational and emotional sides of the consumer are understood during the process.
Food, Beverage, & Hospitality
Experience-based research can often be the most dynamic. This research needs to take into account a longer journey that has a more personal and emotional outcome.
Healthcare
Healthcare research deserves its own category due to its unique nature. In this research, there is a patient-end that needs addressed, but it is also highly focused on the provider. Understanding how the health system, manufacturer, or provider can best meet the patient where they are in their health journey can take a delicate balance of research methods.
Marketing, Advertising, & PR Agencies
When we work with agencies, the agency is our client. Agencies often turn to SMARI to help with the discovery component to inform the creative engine. Better understanding the market and consumer’s attitudes and usage are often the focus of this research and can help feed data-driven insights into the creative process.
Nonprofit
Nonprofits and associations depend on their donor or membership base to sustain their community or industry impact. When partnering with these organizations, we take a thoughtful approach to deeply understand the value they bring and the significance of their mission to the community or industry they serve. As community and industry needs constantly evolve, research helps organizations stay adaptive and aligned with these changes.
How long is a typical research engagement?
Projects typically last between 4 to 8 weeks depending on the methodology used. Some projects can be expedited for results within a week.
How much does a project cost?
The answer we all hate: It depends. The biggest factors in determining cost is the type of audience being targeted (the more niche, the more difficult to recruit for research), type of methodology used, and complexity of analysis. Most engagements start at $15,000. Each engagement is a project. The project will be designed and priced at the start so you know what you are getting, how long it will take, and how much it costs before starting.
What industries do you work in?
All of them. Over the course of 40 years, we have collected experience and partnerships is most industries. This diversity in research experience has engendered more creative solutions with out of the box ideas.
Can you provide examples of your work and case studies?
Yes and no. We can provide generic examples, but our clients come to us for unique solutions and proprietary research. Showing and telling what was truly insightful on a research project would be giving away proprietary answers. Trust us, you will appreciate this when you have your answers in hand. You will not want to share either.
Do you only serve clients in Indiana?
No. Approximately half of our clients are located in Indiana. The other half spreads across the U.S. and even take international roots.
How do you recruit research participants?
Through diverse methods and a stringent quality control process. SMARI houses an internal panel used only for SMARI projects. Given the target audience, SMARI also partners with over 30 reputable providers to diversify recruiting tactics and approaches. Through this tenured and crafted network, SMARI has the ability to target niche audiences and B2B decision makers. This includes participants that are not professional survey takers and are specifically recruited to participate.
We understand that our insights are only as good as the data that is collected. Since we pride ourselves on thoughtful insights, we need reliable, accurate data. For this reason, SMARI uses an 18-step process to ensure respondent integrity. Yes, 18 steps.
Who is actually managing our research project?
There is no sales team at SMARI. From the initial conversation, a SMARI Account Consultant will discuss the research needs, design the project, oversee the process, craft the analysis, and deliver a consultative presentation. There is no sales hand-off here. This might not be the most efficient process, but it is the one that ensures that the initial request matches the end results. We pride ourselves in results and partnerships, not profit margins.
What is the deliverable?
The final deliverable is a summary report, a consultative delivery, and a continuous partnership after delivery. This report includes the basic charted data, but also advanced analytics, summary analysis, key findings and answers to research objectives, and recommendations. The consultative presentation goes beyond the summary report to provide context, comparatives, industry insights and experience. With over 100 projects conducted each year for over 40 years, experience helps to guide the interpretation of results for greater understanding.
Some projects may also include online dashboards, infographics, ideation sessions, etc. SMARI will work with the team to understand what works best to leverage insights.
What involvement does the client have during the project?
Our clients are involved in several key areas:
- Project kickoff to define the objectives and brainstorm working hypotheses
- Survey review and approval
- Observation of research if qualitative is recommended
- Presentation of results
Clients will receive status reports each Monday that define what was accomplished the prior week and what will be accomplished in the upcoming week.
Sometimes the size of the project or the number of stakeholders required a refined process which SMARI is happy to accommodate. This can look like weekly status meetings, preliminary review of results before a final presentation, etc.