A market study too minor to commission does not become a rough answer. It becomes an assumption inside a paper that nobody revisits. Making small studies cheap is what stops that.
Back to all proofs
Eleven people, twenty-nine market studies, one platform
Client
Date
$2B+ US payments and fleet services group
04/2025
The challenge
A $2B+ US payments and fleet services group needed market studies coming from several directions at once: how big an adjacent category really is, where a product sits against its competitive set, which segments behave differently. Each was too small to commission externally. Together they were more studies than the people asking for them could get through.
The solution
FifthRow gave a payments business one place to run its market studies. A specific question goes in - a category size, a competitive position, a price comparison, a segmentation - and a sourced study comes back, in a form the person who asked can use, without an engagement being scoped for it.
29
distinct market studies delivered11 people
across five business areasMarket studies run29 distinct market studies
Reach across the business11 people, five business areas
Engagement spanSix months of standing access
Evidence base607 sources analysed across the account
The most frequent question was the simplest to ask and the slowest to answer: how big is this actually. Sizing was run as a standing capability rather than a commissioned exercise.
Core Activities
- Sized adjacent categories the business was weighing entry into
- Ran bottom-up sizing alongside top-down, so a number could be checked against itself
- Sized by product and by distribution channel, not just at market level
- Re-ran sizing as definitions changed, rather than re-scoping a study
- Returned each answer with its sources attached
The Results
Category sizes the team could put in a paper the same week they thought to ask, with the working visible rather than a single figure handed over.
4 sizing methods
available on the same questionA payments business competes with incumbents and challengers at the same time, and the challengers change faster. Both were tracked as questions rather than as an annual review.
Core Activities
- Ran competitive set analysis on the products the business was defending
- Scouted emerging challengers as a distinct question from established competitors
- Read competitors' technology moves and innovation activity
- Scraped and profiled early-stage entrants in the categories under watch
- Held each read to the same structure, so one could be set against another
The Results
A competitive picture that included the companies not yet big enough to appear in a market report, built to the same standard as the read on the incumbents.
1 standard
incumbents and challengers read the same wayPrice questions are the ones people most want a defensible answer to and least often have the evidence for. They were run as research rather than as internal estimate.
Core Activities
- Compared pricing across the competitive set on a consistent basis
- Read how competitors package and segment their offers by benefit
- Separated list position from what the market appears to actually pay
- Returned pricing reads with sources, so a figure could be defended in a review
- Re-ran comparisons as the set changed
The Results
Price comparisons a team could take into a pricing discussion with the evidence attached, instead of an assertion about where the market sits.
1 basis
every competitor priced comparablySizing tells you how big; segmentation tells you which part is worth going after. Both psychographic and behavioural cuts were run on the same populations.
Core Activities
- Ran psychographic segmentation on the customer populations under review
- Ran behavioural cuts alongside them, on the same base
- Mapped customer journeys and where solutions could enter them
- Read consumer behaviour and expectations as a standing question
- Returned each cut in a form comparable with the others
The Results
Segment views that could be set beside each other rather than commissioned separately, so a decision about which segment to serve had more than one lens on it.
2 cuts
on the same customer base, comparablyThe questions furthest from the core business were the ones with the least internal knowledge behind them, and they were run on the same platform as everything else.
Core Activities
- Researched categories adjacent to the group's core products
- Read industry challenges and sustainability positions across the sector
- Assessed the addressable market for specific adjacent propositions
- Pulled innovation activity out of public filings across the sector
- Answered each one without scoping a separate engagement
The Results
Answers on the parts of the market the business had least prior view of, produced at the same cost and speed as the questions closest to home.
5 business areas
served by the same capabilityWhat it proved
Over six months, eleven people across five business areas of a payments and fleet group ran 29 distinct market studies through one platform - category sizing run four different ways, competitive reads covering incumbents and emerging challengers on one standard, pricing compared on a consistent basis, psychographic and behavioural segmentation on the same customer base, and research into adjacent categories the business had little prior view of. 607 sources sit behind the account. Every question that was asked was answered.
The pattern worth noticing is what got asked. Small market studies usually go undone rather than done badly - they are too minor to commission and too slow to do by hand, so they turn into assumptions inside a paper. Here, three separate question types were run by three or four different people each, which is what a shared capability looks like rather than one analyst's tool. The questions that would previously have been guessed at got researched instead.
Results
| Metric | Benchmark | Result | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small market studies | Too minor to commission, too slow to do by hand | 29 distinct market studies delivered on request | Delivered rather than assumed |
| Reach across the business | Research capability held by whoever had time | 11 people across five business areas | A shared capability, not one person's tool |
| Competitive coverage | Established competitors, via periodic review | Incumbents and emerging challengers, one standard | Challengers visible before they appear in reports |
| Pricing evidence | Positions asserted from internal knowledge | Comparisons run on a consistent, sourced basis | A price view that can be defended in a review |
| Adjacent categories | Least internal knowledge, hardest to research | Researched at the same cost as the core | Distance from the core stopped being a barrier |
A single sizing figure cannot be checked. Running bottom-up alongside top-down, and by product alongside by channel, gives a number something to be wrong against.
Companies too small to appear in a market report are the ones that change a category. Scouting them has to be its own standing question, not a footnote in the competitive review.
Everyone in a pricing discussion has a position on where the market sits. The one with sources attached is the one the discussion ends on.
Psychographic and behavioural cuts on the same base disagree in useful ways. A single cut looks decisive and hides that.
The signal that a research capability has landed is not volume, it is how many different people reach for it - and especially whether the same question type gets run by several of them.
From a manual rate sweep to 60+ competitor banks tracked with full provenance
Client
$6B+ US community bank and its digital deposit brand
Date
08/2026
50,198
analyst-hours equivalent, 22 FTEsTen full-time analysts' worth of research, without a research department
Client
€4B+ European broadcasting and media group
Date
08/2026
18,398
analyst-hours equivalent, 10 FTEsFor Enterprises
ProofSee all
From a standing start to an AI venture serving small businesses
From 72 patents to 4 commercialisation-ready technologies
Cutting a four-month research cycle to six weeks across five validation workstreams
From a weekly newsletter to a self-running innovation radar
A full year's validated-concept target, met in the first quarter
A utility innovation lab that answers its own questions in a day
Finding the next high-growth US metro in five days
FifthRow – The Agentic Consultancy
Copyright 2026 FifthRow Inc., Privacy policy