Most market research tells you what people do. It rarely tells you why.
The gap between behaviour and motivation is where strategy goes wrong. Surveys measure the surface. Interviews, done properly, go underneath it.
Let's talk →Conventional market research has a bias problem. Questionnaires ask leading questions. Focus groups produce socially acceptable answers. Personas are built on assumptions that have never been tested in the field. The result is strategy grounded in data that confirms what the organisation already believed.
Understanding what customers are genuinely trying to achieve requires a different approach: one that gets close to real behaviour, asks open questions without steering the answer, and is willing to be surprised by what it finds.
That is what Jobs-to-be-Done research does when it is conducted properly. And it changes what you build, how you position it, and who you go after.
JTBD interviews
I develop and conduct structured qualitative interviews designed to surface three dimensions of customer motivation: functional jobs (what they are trying to accomplish), social jobs (how they want to be perceived), and emotional jobs (how they want to feel). The questions are open, probing, and deliberately non-leading. The insights they produce consistently challenge assumptions and surface opportunities that standard research misses.
Ethnographic research
Observation reveals what interviews sometimes can't. Ethnographic research means understanding people in context: how they actually behave, not how they describe their behaviour. It surfaces unarticulated needs, habitual workarounds, and the real friction in a customer's experience. These are the details that create genuine competitive advantage when built into a product or proposition.
Market and situational analysis
Research in context. I combine qualitative insight with analysis of market dynamics, competitor positioning, and broader socio-economic and technological forces. The output isn't a data dump. It's a clear picture of where the real opportunities are and what's required to capture them.
Synthesis and strategic direction
Research is only useful when it becomes a decision. I synthesise findings into clear strategic implications: what to build, what to stop, how to position, and who to go after. Delivered as a working document, not a presentation to be filed.
These techniques have been applied across a wide range of sectors. The methodology transfers. The questions change.
A note on AI
You cannot systematise genuine insight with artificial intelligence. AI can assist in structuring, analysing, and synthesising research. It cannot replace the human capacity to sit with someone, follow an unexpected thread, and understand what they are actually trying to tell you. That distinction matters more now, not less.
If your strategy is built on assumptions, research is where you start.
Let's talk →