Quantitative research

Consumer Research in India

Understand what Indian consumers buy, why they buy it and what would make them switch.

Quick answer

Use this method when the question calls for projectable numbers with segment stories behind them. Market Research India runs 800–2,400 interviews over 3–5 weeks, in 50 Indian cities and fourteen languages.

Proposal in 24 hours
Scoped, itemised and fixed-fee.
50 cities, 14 languages
Our own supervised field teams.
Senior-led, NDA-first
A research director on every project.

2,400+

Projects delivered

Cities with field teams

Industries covered

Indian languages

The decisions this study answers

Commission this when one of the questions below is holding up a decision. If your question is not on the list, say so in the brief — we would rather recommend a different method than sell you this one.

Who buys this category today, and how many of them are there?
What triggers a purchase, and what makes a household switch brand?
Which unmet need states are large enough to build a product around?
Where does the funnel leak: awareness, consideration or availability?
How differently does the Tier 2 household behave from the metro household?

How we run it

5 stages, with one research director accountable across all of them. The person who scopes the study is the person who presents the findings.

1
Define the buying universe
We agree who counts as a buyer, then build the sampling frame from census ward data and your own sales geography rather than convenience.
2
Design, translate, pilot
The questionnaire is drafted in English, translated and back-translated, then piloted with thirty to fifty respondents before a single live interview.
3
Field the sample
Tablet-based interviews in homes and at the point of purchase, with supervisors in the field and quota dashboards reviewed every evening.
4
Weight and model
Data is weighted to the population, then funnel, driver and segmentation models are run by the senior statistician on the study.
5
Convert findings into moves
We present each segment with the commercial move it implies, and hand over the tables so your team can keep interrogating them.

At a glance

Consumer Research — typical study parameters

Typical scale: 800 to 2,400 interviews across four to twelve cities, with quotas on SEC, age, gender and category usage
Fieldwork window: Three to five weeks in field, run in parallel across cities
Lead time: Fieldwork opens seven to ten working days after sign-off
Coverage: Metros, Tier 2 cities and rural clusters inside the same sampling frame
Languages: Scripted in English, fielded in up to ten Indian languages
Core methods: Household surveys · Shopper intercepts · Segmentation · Need-state mapping
Reporting: Weighted data tables, segment profiles and a working session with your category team
Best suited to: Mapping and sizing demand across a whole category

What you receive

3 named deliverables, each written to be used rather than filed. Everything ships with the underlying data, so your team can keep working after the debrief.

Consumer segments
Four to six segments with size, demographics, media habits and the one message each responds to, not cluster labels.
Purchase funnel
Awareness, consideration, trial and repeat measured brand by brand, with the largest single leak isolated.
Driver analysis
A regression that ranks which attributes actually move choice, so budget goes to the two that do.

How the fieldwork is validated

Fieldwork in India fails quietly when nobody checks it. These controls are run on every consumer research study, by a quality team that reports separately from the field team.

GPS and duration stamps on every interview
Each tablet record carries a location and a length. Interviews that are too short, or clustered at one convenient address, are pulled before they reach the dataset.
Twenty per cent audio back-checks
A fifth of all interviews are re-contacted or audio-reviewed by a quality team that does not report to the field supervisor who ran them.
One supervisor to six interviewers
Supervisors accompany each interviewer at least twice a week and sit through the full interview, not the doorstep introduction.
Translation and independent back-translation
Every instrument is translated into the field language, back-translated into English by a second linguist, then piloted before launch.
Intercepts tied to a store code
Every shopper intercept is logged against an outlet code and timestamp, so a sample cannot quietly collapse into one busy market.

Method choice

Consumer Research, or one of these instead?

Most briefs can be answered more than one way, and the wrong instrument is the most expensive mistake in research. Here is how consumer research compares with the two methods buyers most often weigh against it.

	Consumer Research	Usage & Attitude Studies	Quantitative Surveys
Best used for	Mapping and sizing demand across a whole category	Building the foundation other studies will refer back to	Producing numbers that survive scrutiny
Typical scale	800–2,400 interviews	1,000–3,000 interviews	400–5,000 completes
Fieldwork window	3–5 weeks	5–8 weeks	3–6 weeks
Evidence produced	Projectable numbers with segment stories behind them	A complete baseline picture of the category	Measured incidence with a stated margin of error
Projects to a population
Relative cost	Mid to high	High, amortised over several years	Scales with sample and incidence

Where this method stops

It will not tell you why a specific pack failed in a specific store. That is an ethnography or a product test.

City coverage

Where this work is strongest

We field in all 50 cities, but these are the markets where this method has the most to offer — because of the infrastructure, the respondent base or the sectors concentrated there.

Before you brief us

Frequently asked questions

How long does a consumer research project take?

Three to five weeks in field, run in parallel across cities. Fieldwork opens seven to ten working days after sign-off. Analysis and reporting add a further one to two weeks, so most studies close inside six to ten weeks from brief to debrief.

What sample size do you recommend?

800 to 2,400 interviews across four to twelve cities, with quotas on SEC, age, gender and category usage. The right number is set by the smallest subgroup you need to report separately, not by a round figure, and we will say when a smaller sample would answer the question just as well.

What drives the cost of consumer research in India?

Incidence and audience difficulty first, then scale, the number of cities and languages, and the depth of reporting. Relative to other methods on this site, the cost profile is: mid to high. Send a brief and you get a fixed-fee proposal within 24 hours.

When is consumer research the wrong choice?

It will not tell you why a specific pack failed in a specific store. That is an ethnography or a product test.

How do you control quality in the field?

Each tablet record carries a location and a length. Interviews that are too short, or clustered at one convenient address, are pulled before they reach the dataset. Beyond that, intercepts tied to a store code: every shopper intercept is logged against an outlet code and timestamp, so a sample cannot quietly collapse into one busy market.

Can international teams commission this from outside India?

Yes. We report in English, run calls across US, European and Asian time zones, and handle local-language fieldwork and translation end to end.

Study at a glance

Discipline: Quantitative
Typical scale: 800–2,400 interviews
Field window: 3–5 weeks
Projectable: Yes
Relative cost: Mid to high
Cities covered: 50

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Keep exploring

Everything built on this method

8 metros, 42 Tier 2 markets, 30 sectors and 21 guides, each applying consumer research to one specific context.

Tier 1 metros

Full-scale fieldwork, viewing facilities and senior decision-maker access.

Tier 2 markets

Each city covered from a local field base that also reaches the surrounding districts.

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By industry

The same method applied to one sector’s audiences, vocabulary and buying process.

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Guides and pricing

Cost drivers, briefing checklists and buyer guides written for this method.

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Other quantitative methods

Closest alternatives, where a different instrument may answer the question better.

Every other service

The full method set, from qualitative immersion to strategic modelling.

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Next step

Ready to scope a consumer research study?