A stakeholder asks for research around a broad question. “Why are younger customers choosing competitors?” Or perhaps, “Would people buy this new product?” Both questions sound simple enough when they’re first asked. The difficult part is when someone has to turn that question into a survey that can answer it.
Before anyone starts writing a survey, the team needs to explain why the research is happening and what the business needs to learn. They also need to describe who should take part to get quality insights. This knowledge starts with a clear research brief.
A well-written brief gives the research team enough context to fully understand the problem behind the question and the decision the findings need to support. It also helps reduce back-and-forth once the project starts, because everyone has a clear idea of what the work needs to achieve.
The brief sets the direction for the project, but it doesn’t need to lock in every detail. The researcher decides the methodology or sample design once they’ve understood the objectives and audience.
In this guide, we’ll look at what goes into an effective market research brief, how to write each section, the details it should include and how AI can turn that context into focused research objectives faster.
TL;DR
- A good market research brief starts with the business problem. Explain why the project is happening and what decision the business needs to make, so the researcher understands the commercial reason.
- The brief should clearly explain what insights researchers need to gather during the research project. Distinguish the business objective from the specific questions the study needs to answer
- Audience requirements need to be practical. Explain who should take part and include the criteria that matter, while avoiding restrictions that would make recruitment harder.
- Ensure you leave room in the brief for the researcher’s expertise. If you know the preferred approach, include it, but you don’t need to decide every method or detail before the researcher has assessed the brief.
- Agree on practical requirements early in the briefing process. Timelines, budgets, deliverables and stakeholder responsibilities can affect how work is planned, so they should be made clear.
- Attest’s AI co-pilot, Compass, can take the brief to the next stage. It can structure the objectives from an existing brief, then use those to help draft the survey and keep the resulting findings connected to the original research goals.
What should you include in a market research brief?
The format of a market research brief will depend on the project, but a strong one usually answers the same questions:
- Why is the research needed?
- What does the team need to learn?
- Who should take part?
- What practical requirements will shape the study?
You don’t need a huge document to answer these questions. The aim is to give the researcher enough key information to understand the project and decide what needs to happen next. Below is a market research brief template you can work with to get started.
1. Business and project background
Start with enough background information to help R&I teams understand the reason behind the project. Someone outside the R&I team should be able to read this section and understand what’s being researched without needing a separate conversation to explain the basics.
The useful details will depend on the specific study. If you’re briefing a market research agency, you might need to explain what the company does, which product or service is involved and where it belongs in a category. Customer or market conditions may also matter, particularly when they explain why the project is happening.
| Pro Tip: If your research is based around a product or service that you want to market, provide as much detail as possible about these in the brief, including benefits and use cases. The more information you provide around product features and specifications, for example, the better the researcher can understand what insights need to be uncovered for marketing needs. |
Previous research can also be useful when it changes what the team already knows or what the new study needs to investigate.
Perhaps an earlier study found a drop in consideration among a particular customer group. Maybe the team already knows that a new competitor has entered the category. Existing information like this can change what the researcher needs to investigate.
There may also be internal context that matters, like a new product launch, a change in positioning or a recent commercial problem. This context doesn’t mean you need to write a full history of the organization. A short, relevant explanation is usually enough.
For example, imagine a meal delivery brand that sells weekly subscription boxes to consumers across the US. Younger customers now make up a growing share of new subscribers, but the business has limited research on how this group judges price, choice, quality and value with competing services.
2. Business or marketing objectives
This section of the brief should explain why you’re commissioning the research. Start with the business problem, challenge or opportunity that created the need for the project, then explain what the organization wants to achieve as a result.
The business problem explains the reason for the research, which could be a decrease in sales, increasing competition, changing customer satisfaction or a shift in customer behavior. The business or marketing objectives outline what the organization wants to improve, change or achieve.
The researcher needs both pieces of information. Without it, the study can become too focused on collecting information that doesn’t help the business make a decision.
Here’s an example:
- Business problem: Repeat purchases among 18- to 30-year-old customers have decreased over the last six months.
- Business objective: Increase repeat purchases in this group.
The research should then help the company understand what’s getting in the way of another purchase and what could change that behavior, which leads us to the research objective.
3. Research objectives
Research objectives are the specific things you want the survey to uncover. They turn the broader business objective into clear questions that the study needs to answer.
Using the repeat purchase example the objectives could include:
- Understanding why customers in this group aren’t reordering
- Identifying the factors that have the biggest influence on repeat purchases
- Understanding which changes could make customers more likely to buy again
Each objective should be specific enough to guide the research. “Understand customer behavior” is too broad because it could lead in many directions.
A more useful objective would be “understand whether customers are less likely to reorder because of price, the product range or their experience with their previous order.”
These objectives give the researcher a much better basis for deciding what to explore. They can also make discussions and reviews with stakeholders easier because everyone can see what the study is trying to answer.
Where it’s useful, add more detail on research objectives. If the team wants to understand why customers aren’t reordering, the brief could specify perceptions of value for money, satisfaction with the product range, competitor usage and reasons for choosing another brand.
The aim is to be specific enough about research objectives to give the team direction and to help researchers understand the question before turning the brief into a questionnaire. They’ll still need room to determine the best way to investigate these objectives and design the study themselves.
4. Target audience and sample requirements
The next section in your market research brief explains who needs to take part in the study and what the final sample should look like.
Depending on the project, that could mean location, age, income, purchasing behavior or previous experience with the category.
Customer status can matter too. Researchers may need to speak to current customers, recent buyers, lapsed customers or people who’ve considered a product without making a purchase.
The more clearly you describe the audience you need to hear from, the easier it is for the researcher to gather the right insights to answer the research question.
For example, a study exploring premium skincare purchasing among adults aged 25 to 44 in the US could specify that respondents must have purchased premium skincare within the last six months.
If the requirements are already known, include a target sample size in the research brief too. You might need a target sample size of 1,000 respondents. The brief should also state whether the sample needs to be nationally representative, whether quotas are required and which subgroups the team wants to compare in the analysis. It can also help to state which groups the team expects to compare during the analysis.
These requirements affect how respondents are recruited and how feasible the study is to run. Narrow targeting criteria can reduce the respondent pool, which may also increase the cost of the research or increase the time needed to reach the sample.
For this reason, the brief needs some detail on targeting. Include criteria that help answer the research question, then leave out restrictions that narrow the audience.
This level of detail gives the researcher enough information to start planning while leaving room for them to advise on the project’s target audience and sample requirements.
5. Research approach or methodology
The next section covers the preferred market research method, if you have one. The team may already know that the project needs quantitative research because it wants to measure attitudes across a larger group.
Another project may need qualitative research because the goal is to understand how people describe an experience or why they make a particular decision. For example, qualitative research could explore why customers feel frustrated when trying to cancel a subscription.
If a specific research method has already been agreed, include that in the brief. The method could be interviews, focus groups, surveys, concept testing or conjoint analysis.
What matters is being clear about whether the research methodology is fixed or open to discussion. If the business has already committed to surveys, say so. If the team knows what it needs to learn but isn’t sure how best to investigate it, give the researcher the objectives and audience requirements and let them recommend the approach.
For example, a company exploring why customers abandon a new financial product might initially assume that a survey is the right answer. The researcher could decide that interviews are needed first to understand the reasons in more depth.
The brief doesn’t need to settle every methodological decision upfront. It should give the researcher enough context to choose an approach that fits the problem.
7. Deliverables and reporting requirements
The research team also needs to know how the findings should be delivered and how the business intends to use them.
That could mean a presentation for senior stakeholders, a dashboard for ongoing access or a detailed report. Raw data may be needed if an internal team wants to do its own analysis after the market research project is complete.
Agree these requirements upfront so the research team can plan the work around the final output. If the study is supporting a launch decision, for example, the reporting should make it easy to see what the findings say about demand and whether further investigation may be needed.
Different teams may also need different outputs. Marketing may need a concise slide deck, while the insights team may need access to the underlying data.
Also specify the level of detail expected in the findings or any comparisons that need to be shown.
Being clear about these needs gives the research team a better idea of what the finished deliverable must cover before they begin work.
8. Timeline, budget and key contacts
Finish the brief with the practical information the research team needs to plan the project, starting with the timeline. Say when the research findings are needed and include any key milestones or fixed dates that could affect the project.
A launch date or campaign deadline can all affect how much time the researcher has for recruitment, fieldwork, analysis and reporting.
| Pro Tip: Work backward from the date you need the research findings, allowing enough time for fieldwork and analysis. This timeline gives you a more realistic project schedule than choosing a launch date first. |
Include the budget if it’s already been decided. This helps the researcher recommend an approach that fits the available resources rather than designing something that can’t realistically be delivered.
The brief should also identify the main stakeholders and explain what they’ll be responsible for. This could include providing materials and existing research, reviewing the survey and approving important stages of the project
For example, the product team might need to supply details about a new feature while the marketing lead reviews the questionnaire and a senior stakeholder signs off on the final findings.
Clarifying these responsibilities upfront makes it easier for the research team to know who to involve as the project progresses.
How Compass helps you turn a research brief into a survey
Once a brief is written, the next job is turning that context into a study. Compass is Attest’s AI conversational research co-pilot. It can help turn a research brief into focused objectives, use those objectives to draft survey questions and organize the resulting insights around what the team originally wanted to learn.
Compass carries the research context through more of the workflow, so the brief and survey don’t become separate pieces of work. This process means the work done at the briefing stage can carry directly into survey creation.
Below, we’ll show you how Compass turns a research brief into a survey first draft that cuts the manual work and helps researchers go from questionnaire to final analysis.
Turn your brief into focused research objectives
After the team has written a detailed brief, researchers can paste the content into the Brief tab in Attest. Compass reads that context and suggests a structured set of objectives, which the researcher can review and edit before continuing.
Imagine the meal delivery business from earlier has completed its brief. It’s explained that younger customers are becoming more important and that repeat purchases have fallen. The team needs to understand why.
Instead of taking that information and manually translating it into separate survey questions, the researcher can give the brief to Compass and use its suggested objectives as a starting point.
Compass can identify the areas the delivery business study needs to investigate based on the context it’s given. If the brief doesn’t contain enough detail, it can also prompt the researcher for more context, such as the target audience or core business question.
Use objectives to optimize survey creation
Once the objectives have been reviewed, Compass can use them to help draft the survey. Instead of opening a blank editor and building the questionnaire from scratch, the researcher starts with questions designed around what the study needs to learn.
Compass can draft questions based on the objectives, which gives the researcher something concrete to review.
For example, if one objective is to understand why customers who considered a new product decided not to buy it, the draft can focus on areas like purchase barriers and reasons for choosing another option.
The researcher can then refine the questions to match the final study requirements. But the result is still a first draft, so human review is a part of the process.
The same objectives can then be used to organize the results once the survey has closed. Compass brings together relevant findings and supporting data so researchers can see what the study says about the questions they originally set out to answer. It can also highlight relevant differences between demographic groups or audience segments.
This process creates continuity from the briefing stage through to the analysis, which is a connection that can be particularly useful for teams handling multiple projects at once.
Start with a clear brief, get better research
An effective research brief gives teams what they need to understand the business problem, define what the study should answer, know who to speak to and plan the appropriate methodology.
It doesn’t have to cover every decision at once. Its job is to explain the purpose of the project clearly enough that the research can move forward without the need for constant clarification.
That means giving enough background, making the business problem clear and writing specific objectives.
The brief then becomes a starting point for the next stage. With Compass, researchers can copy an existing brief into Attest and turn the context into focused objectives. Researchers can use those objectives to create a survey. Once the survey closes, those objectives can also help keep the findings connected to the questions the study was designed to answer.
Compass makes the move from briefing to fieldwork faster. The team spends less time trying to fill gaps left by a vague brief and more time working with a clear understanding of what the research needs to do.
