The short answer: B2B market research is the process of gathering and analyzing feedback from business buyers and other professionals to understand what organizations need and how they make purchasing decisions. It can also help companies evaluate competitors, test new ideas, measure brand health, or improve the customer experience.
The audience is primarily what makes this type of research different.
If a software company wants feedback on a new compliance platform, surveying a general group of working professionals will not tell them much.
They may need HR or payroll leaders who influence compliance solutions at their organizations. Those people can speak to how products are evaluated and what matters when it is time to buy.
Getting that distinction right has a major impact on the quality of the research.
In this guide, we’ll explain how B2B market research works, the methods companies commonly use, and how to conduct a study from beginning to end.
We’ll also share examples from B2B studies our team has conducted so you can see how the research translates into actual business decisions.
Business-to-business market research, often shortened to B2B market research, is research conducted with people who make or influence decisions on behalf of an organization.
Depending on the study, that audience could include executives, engineers, physicians, IT managers, business owners, or other professionals with specific job responsibilities.
The important part is not simply finding someone with the right job title. Researchers also need to make sure participants have enough knowledge of the topic to provide useful feedback.
For example, an IT manager may sound like a good fit for software research. But if the study is about enterprise cybersecurity platforms, that person may still need to have evaluated vendors or participated in a recent purchase to qualify.
This additional level of screening is one reason B2B research often requires more planning than a general consumer study.
More on that below!
The biggest difference between B2B and B2C market research is who is making the decision and what influences that decision.
That difference affects nearly every part of the study, from who you recruit to the methodology you choose.
Area | B2B Market Research | B2C Market Research |
|---|---|---|
Who participates | Business professionals, decision-makers, and others involved in evaluating or purchasing a product or service | Individual consumers or households |
Buying process | Often involves several stakeholders or departments with different priorities | Usually centers on one consumer or household decision |
Recruiting | Audiences tend to be smaller and more specialized, so qualified participants can be harder to find | Broader consumer audiences are typically easier to reach through large panels |
Methodology | Often uses in-depth interviews, targeted online surveys, and other approaches suited to niche professional audiences | Frequently uses larger online surveys, focus groups, and broader consumer research methods |
What research explores | Business value, operational needs, technical requirements, purchasing criteria, and longer-term ROI | Personal preferences, price sensitivity, brand perceptions, and emotional purchase drivers |
Most companies do not need research simply because they want more data. There is usually a business decision behind the project.
The strongest B2B studies start there. Below are common objectives our B2B market research company hears from clients.
Research can show how organizations move from recognizing a need to choosing a vendor.
What triggered the search? Where did buyers look for information? Which providers made the initial shortlist? Who became involved later?
These questions are particularly useful when sales or marketing teams can see what happened in their CRM data but cannot explain why it happened.
For instance, a company may know it loses a large percentage of opportunities after the demonstration stage. In-depth interviews with recent buyers and lost prospects can help uncover whether the issue is product fit, the sales experience, pricing, or something else entirely.
That information gives teams something more useful than another vanity conversion metric. It tells them what may need to change.
Digital analytics are useful for many things. They can tell you how many people visited your website, what pages they browsed, where they converted or exited entirely.
But they cannot tell you how many buyers have never heard of your company.
B2B brand research can measure unaided awareness, aided awareness, consideration, and perceptions among the broader market. The same study can also show how competitors perform on those measures.
This becomes useful when a company needs to understand whether its challenge is awareness or something deeper.
If buyers know the brand but rarely consider it, increasing impressions may not solve the problem. The research may point toward positioning, messaging, or another issue instead.
B2B market research can be especially valuable before investing heavily in a new offering.
Concept testing gives potential buyers something specific to react to before a company commits to development. Depending on the study, researchers can test overall appeal, pricing, feature preferences, or different versions of the concept.
Here’s a real world example from our work.
Drive Research partnered with a London-based M&A and strategic advisory firm that was considering a new service. We surveyed former and prospective clients, collecting responses to a 10-minute online survey. The research tested the service’s appeal and perceived value while also exploring pricing elasticity and potential features.
The findings gave the advisory firm independent feedback it could use to evaluate the concept’s feasibility and make decisions about how the service should move forward.
That is a good example of using research before the launch decision rather than waiting until a new offering is already in the market.
B2B research is not limited to attracting new customers but it can be more challenging when compared to consumer-facing brands.
Customer satisfaction surveys can uncover weaknesses in an existing relationship. Onboarding research can identify problems early in the customer lifecycle. Lost-customer studies can help explain why accounts leave.
There is an important advantage to using an independent researcher for some of this work.
Customers may be reluctant to tell an account manager exactly why they are unhappy. A third party customer survey can create more distance from the relationship, giving people room to be candid about what went wrong.
The findings can then be used to improve the experience for current customers or guide re-engagement efforts with past accounts.
A company may be considering a new industry to tap into or trying to determine which segment deserves more attention. Research can help estimate the opportunity and understand whether buyer needs differ enough to warrant a different strategy.
Research tip: This is often an area where secondary and primary research work well together. Existing market data can help establish the landscape first. Primary research can then dig into the questions that published reports cannot answer.
There are a few different ways to categorize B2B research. Two of the most useful distinctions are primary versus secondary research and qualitative versus quantitative research.
Primary market research means collecting new data specifically for your business question.
Online surveys, in-depth interviews, focus groups, and usability studies are common examples. The entire research process can be customized to your audience, key questions, and objectives, which makes primary research useful when the answer does not already exist.
Secondary market research uses information that has already been collected.
That could include industry publications, government datasets, previous research reports, competitor websites, and other publicly available information.
Secondary research can be a smart first step because it prevents a company from paying to rediscover information that is already available. But for most B2B organizations, their audience and needs are so specific that they often choose to sponsor their own research.
Another way to think about the types of B2B research is whether you need to explore or measure.
Qualitative research is typically used to understand the why behind a decision. In-depth interviews and focus groups give researchers time to probe, ask follow-up questions, and hear how participants describe an experience in their own words.
Quantitative research puts numbers around those ideas.
Online surveys can measure how common a perception is across a broader audience or determine whether meaningful differences exist between buyer groups.
We often recommend qualitative research when there is still a lot the client does not know. Quantitative research makes more sense when the team knows what it wants to measure or validate.
Some projects use a hybrid of both qual. and quant. The methodology should follow the decision you need to make.
Many B2B market research methods often combine qualitative and quantitative research to better understand the multiple stakeholders involved in longer, more complex buying decisions.
If you need to learn… | Consider… | Here’s why |
|---|---|---|
Why buyers choose you or a competitor | In-depth interviews or win-loss research | Gives buyers room to explain how the decision happened |
How your brand compares with competitors | Online surveys or brand equity research | Measures awareness, consideration, and market perceptions |
Which audiences should be prioritized | Segmentation research | Identifies meaningful differences across your customer or prospect base |
How buyers interact with software or a website | UX research | Shows where users struggle and why |
Whether a new idea has market potential | Concept testing | Measures reactions before a larger investment is made |
Which features or product bundles buyers prefer | Conjoint or other advanced analytics | Forces realistic trade-offs between competing options |
Where a new market opportunity may exist | Secondary research followed by primary research | Establishes the landscape before exploring buyer needs |
A common mistake is choosing the method first.
“We want to run a survey” sounds like a research plan, but it still leaves the most important question unanswered: What decision will the survey help you make?
Starting with the business problem makes it much easier to determine whether a survey or focus group is actually the right tool.
To conduct B2B market research, companies need a structured way to gather and analyze feedback from business buyers, key decision-makers, and the broader market.
The goal is to turn that information into clearer decisions around strategy, positioning, and growth.
While the specifics will vary depending on the audience and research objectives, most B2B market research projects follow a similar process.
Here are the key steps to move from an initial business question to actionable findings.
Start by getting specific about why the research is happening.
“Understanding our market” is too broad to guide a study. ❌
“Determine whether mid-sized manufacturers are a viable audience for our new service” gives the research team something concrete to work from. ✅
We often ask clients how they plan to use the findings of the market research. If that question is hard to answer, the objectives probably need more work.
The target audience should connect directly to the decision. That may require more than a job title.
A study could need respondents from a certain department who work at companies above a specific size. Participants might also need to have evaluated a product category within the past year.
For some research, it makes sense to hear from different groups separately.
Users and decision-makers can both have valuable perspectives, but their answers should not necessarily be combined without understanding their different roles.
Once you know what you need to learn and who you need to hear from, the next step is choosing the right research approach.
In many B2B studies, the methodology may include:
A reminder: In some cases, one method is enough. In others, combining qualitative and quantitative research gives you both the depth and validation needed to make a confident decision.
Once the research is designed, it is time to start collecting feedback.
For an online survey, that means programming clear, unbiased questions and recruiting qualified respondents from your target audience. Respondents may come from a customer list, B2B panel network, or custom outreach depending on how specific the audience is.
While fieldwork is underway, researchers should monitor response quality and make sure quotas are filling as planned. In B2B studies, this can also include verifying that respondents actually match the professional criteria they claimed in the screener.
For qualitative research, collection typically involves recruiting, scheduling, and conducting interviews or focus groups with screened participants.
After collection closes, the data is cleaned and analyzed. Quantitative results may be compared by factors such as company size or decision-making role, while qualitative feedback is grouped into recurring themes, pain points, and buyer preferences.
The goal is to turn raw responses into patterns the business can actually use.
Useful resource: Learn more about our approach to B2B survey data quality to ensure high quality insights.
A strong final report should not stop at “here is what respondents said.” The more useful question is what the organization should do because of it.
B2B survey findings become valuable when they point to a clear decision or next step. For example:
B2B survey finding | How the company could act on it |
|---|---|
62% of buyers said implementation time was one of their biggest concerns, but only 28% felt the sales team explained the onboarding process clearly. | Create clearer implementation timelines and onboarding materials. Sales teams could also address the process earlier in conversations instead of waiting until late in the buying cycle. |
Enterprise buyers rated advanced reporting as highly important, while smaller companies placed much more value on ease of use. | Adjust product messaging by segment. Enterprise campaigns could emphasize reporting capabilities, while messaging for smaller businesses could focus more heavily on simplicity and ease of adoption. |
Only 24% of prospects were aware of a recently launched service, but those familiar with it showed much higher purchase interest. | The issue may be awareness rather than the service itself. Marketing could increase promotion among the target audience before making major changes to the offer or pricing. |
One of our B2B studies involved a client that wanted to better understand buyers of its compliance solutions.
The company needed insight into buyer needs and market perceptions, but there was also a more specific decision on the table: How should its compliance products be bundled and priced?
Drive Research designed the project in two quantitative phases.
For both phases, respondents had to influence compliance solutions at their organizations, work in HR or payroll, and hold a manager-level position or higher.
The results helped steer several next steps for the B2B organization.
The research gave the client a detailed view of customer expectations and decision criteria. It also showed how buyers approached compliance management and purchasing.
Most importantly, the conjoint phase gave the client data it could use to optimize the product bundles offered to customers based on functional needs and price expectations.
Rather than deciding what to bundle based on internal assumptions, the company could use buyer feedback to shape the offering.
B2B market research is the process of collecting and analyzing information from business buyers and other professionals. Companies use it to better understand customer needs, buyer behavior, competitive position, and potential market opportunities.
B2B research can be primary or secondary.
Primary research collects new feedback through methods such as surveys and interviews. Secondary research analyzes information that already exists, including published research or industry data.
B2B research can also be qualitative or quantitative. Qualitative research explores experiences and motivations in depth, while quantitative research measures patterns across a larger sample.
Common methods include online surveys, in-depth interviews, focus groups, brand research, segmentation studies, UX research, concept testing, and advanced analytics such as conjoint.
The right methodology depends on the question the company is trying to answer.
Start by defining the business decision the research needs to support and identifying the professionals who can speak to it.
Next, choose the appropriate methodology and develop the research materials. Qualified participants are then recruited before fieldwork begins.
After data collection, the findings are analyzed and translated into recommendations the organization can act on.
B2B buyer research examines how organizations identify a need, evaluate potential solutions, and ultimately select a provider.
The research can explore who influences the purchase and what criteria buyers use when comparing options. It can also identify friction or unanswered questions that affect the final decision.
B2B research usually focuses on narrower professional audiences and more complex purchasing decisions.
Several people may influence the same purchase, and each can evaluate the product from a different perspective. Researchers also tend to use stricter screening criteria to make sure participants actually understand the decision being studied.
There is no standard sample size that works for every B2B study.
The right number depends on the methodology, how niche the audience is, and whether the research needs to compare different subgroups.
Qualitative research typically focuses on depth rather than a large sample. Quantitative studies need a larger sample when the goal is reliable measurement or subgroup analysis.
For difficult B2B audiences, respondent quality should come before chasing a large number simply for the sake of having one.
Drive Research specializes in custom B2B market research for organizations that need feedback from business decision-makers and other professional audiences.
Our team conducts both quantitative and qualitative research. We can also support B2B recruiting for niche audiences when identifying the right participants is one of the biggest challenges.
We do not force every B2B project into the same methodology. The approach is built around what you need to learn and the decision you need to make afterward.
Get a custom B2B market research recommendation from Drive Research.
