Build every brand decision on what consumers actually do and think.
Usage and Attitudes research is the strategic foundation of brand understanding. At Haystack, we map consumer behaviour, category dynamics, and brand perception in a single integrated research programme, giving you the complete picture of who uses what, how, when, and why, and what that means for your brand.
About the solution
What is Usage & Attitudes research?
A U&A study is the most comprehensive map you can draw of your consumer and your category. It tells you who uses what, how often, on which occasions, and why. It reveals the attitudes, motivations, and barriers that drive brand choice, and the category dynamics that shape the competitive landscape around you.
At Haystack, U&A is not a data collection exercise. It is a strategic intelligence programme. We combine the scale and statistical confidence of large quantitative surveys with the depth and nuance of qualitative exploration, so the picture we hand you is complete, actionable, and grounded in how real consumers actually think and behave.
The strategic foundation
U&A is the starting point for stronger segmentation, sharper brand positioning, and smarter innovation decisions. Every major brand choice becomes more precise when it is anchored in real consumer truth, and not internal assumption.
Built for integration
Whether you need a standalone category audit, a foundational brand health study, or U&A findings that feed directly into an innovation sprint, Haystack designs the research around your strategic agenda, not a generic template.
The consumer map every brand team needs
The question is never whether you need U&A research. It is whether the picture you currently have is complete enough to build on. Haystack's U&A programmes give marketing, innovation, and insights teams a shared, trustworthy foundation for every major brand and category decision.
Brand & category managers
Understand how consumer behaviour is shifting in your category before your competitors do. Benchmark brand health, identify the attitudes that predict future switching, and prioritise your next move accordingly.
Innovation & R&D teams
Identify the unmet needs and usage occasions your next product could own. A strong U&A study reveals the white spaces in the category that no amount of internal brainstorming can surface on its own.
Marketing teams
Stop guessing why your target consumer chooses a competitor. U&A research tells you exactly who buys what, when, and why, and where your brand sits in the mental and physical availability map of your category.
Insights teams
Build a shared category intelligence base that works for every stakeholder. U&A findings feed directly into segmentation models, brand tracking frameworks, and portfolio decisions.
Don't build brand strategy on assumptions
We design U&A programmes around your strategic agenda, not a generic research template. Whether you need a foundational category deep-dive, a periodic tracking framework, or U&A input that feeds your next segmentation study, we bring the methodological expertise and the category curiosity to make the insight count.
Ideal Partner
Why partner with Haystack Consulting for Usage & Attitudes research
U&A research is only as valuable as the strategic thinking built into its design. A generic questionnaire produces generic findings. Our U&A programmes are built around your specific business questions, with a research design that integrates qualitative depth and quantitative scale from the very first briefing.
We bring a category-immersed team to every programme. Our qualitative researchers explore the attitudes and motivations behind the numbers. Our quantitative analysts build the measurement framework that makes findings scalable and statistically robust. And our strategists translate the integrated insight picture into clear recommendations that move your brand forward.
Our U&A work has shaped brand strategy, repositioning decisions, innovation roadmaps, and portfolio choices for clients across FMCG, retail, food service, automotive, financial services, and beyond. Whatever your category, the approach is the same: real consumer truth, translated into strategic direction.
Unique process
One team. The full consumer picture. Every dimension that matters.
U&A research at Haystack runs across two capability streams, qualitative and quantitative, each designed to answer a different dimension of the same question: what is really driving consumer behaviour in this category?
QUANTITATIVE
- Large-Scale U&A Surveys
- U&A Tracking Studies
- Segmentation-Linked U&A
QUALITATIVE
- Exploratory Focus Groups
- In-Depth Interviews (IDIs)
- Ethnographic & Diary Studies
Brand aligned
A partner who makes consumer truth strategically useful
Data about what people do is only half the picture. Understanding why they do it, and translating that into a clear strategic direction, is where U&A research earns its value.
Integrated by design
Qual and quant run as one programme at Haystack, not as separate projects with separate reports and separate conclusions. The result is a single, coherent picture of consumer behaviour and the attitudes that drive it.
Category-first thinking
Every U&A programme starts with a thorough review of your category context. We don't write questionnaires in a vacuum. We immerse in your market, your competitive set, and your brand positioning before the first question is drafted.
Strategy-ready outputs
Findings are structured to answer your business question directly. Every U&A report includes a strategic implications section that translates consumer insight into concrete brand, portfolio, and innovation recommendation, not just a data summary.
Designed for downstream use
Our U&A frameworks are built to feed cleanly into segmentation studies, brand tracking systems, innovation sprints, and positioning workshops, so the research keeps generating value long after the final report is delivered.
How we design and deliver your U&A programme
From category immersion to final delivery, every step is built around your business question, not a standardised template. Our integrated team means qual and quant expertise sit in the same room from day one.
Alignment
We define your strategic questions, scope the U&A framework, what to measure, at what level of depth, and across which consumer segments, and agree on the qual and quant design and sequencing.
Fieldwork
Quantitative surveys run across your target consumer profiles, nationally representative or targeted by usage, brand relationship, or demographics. Qualitative sessions run in parallel or in sequence depending on the design and timeline.
Delivery
Outputs range from executive topline summaries to full strategic U&A reports with brand health benchmarks, competitive positioning maps, opportunity space analysis, and prioritised recommendations. Workshops available for activation.
Framework design
We build your U&A questionnaire and qualitative discussion guide from scratch, grounded in category context, brand positioning, and the strategic decisions the research needs to support. No copy-paste from a previous study.
Analysis & integration
Quantitative data and qualitative insight are brought together into a single strategic picture, segmented by consumer type, usage occasion, and brand relationship. Drivers, barriers, white spaces, and attitude clusters are mapped and interpreted together.
Alignment
We define your strategic questions, scope the U&A framework, what to measure, at what level of depth, and across which consumer segments, and agree on the qual and quant design and sequencing.
Framework design
Every U&A programme starts with a thorough review of your category context. We don't write questionnaires in a vacuum. We immerse in your market, your competitive set, and your brand positioning before the first question is drafted.
Fieldwork
Quantitative surveys run across your target consumer profiles, nationally representative or targeted by usage, brand relationship, or demographics. Qualitative sessions run in parallel or in sequence depending on the design and timeline.
Analysis & integration
Quantitative data and qualitative insight are brought together into a single strategic picture, segmented by consumer type, usage occasion, and brand relationship. Drivers, barriers, white spaces, and attitude clusters are mapped and interpreted together.
Delivery
Outputs range from executive topline summaries to full strategic U&A reports with brand health benchmarks, competitive positioning maps, opportunity space analysis, and prioritised recommendations. Workshops available for activation.
Don’t just take our word for it
"Great team to work with. Always innovating research agency for sensorial research!"
"Haystack brainstorms with us as a partner to create challenging, innovative, and custom-made projects."
"We have great professional experience with Haystack! They are reliable, dynamic, pleasant and highly flexible. They are specialised in sensory research among others."
"Haystack has a critical approach embedded in their company culture and methodologies. That is why we prefer to work with Haystack."
Ready to build your brand on consumer truth?
The brands that win in the long run are the ones that understand their consumer more accurately than their competitors do. If you're ready to invest in that understanding, our team would love to connect.
Frequently asked questions
What does a typical U&A study measure?
The core framework covers: category awareness and penetration, brand usage funnel (aware / tried / regular / main brand), purchase frequency and occasion profiling, channel and format usage, functional and emotional needs, brand and category attitudes, and purchase driver and barrier analysis. We extend or refocus the framework based on your strategic priorities.
How is a U&A study different from a brand tracker?
A brand tracker focuses primarily on brand health metrics over time, awareness, consideration, preference, Net Promoter Score. A U&A study goes deeper into category dynamics, usage behaviour, occasion structure, and the attitudinal drivers behind brand choice. The two are complementary: U&A provides the strategic map, brand tracking monitors movement across it. Haystack designs both, and builds them to work together.
Can Haystack run U&A studies across multiple markets?
Yes. Our quantitative fieldwork networks and online qualitative platforms support multi-market deployment across key European and international markets, with local-language questionnaires, translated stimuli, and local moderators for qualitative components. Cross-market alignment is built into the design phase to ensure findings are comparable without flattening genuine market differences.
How many respondents do we need for a valid U&A study?
Minimum sample depends on your category penetration rate, the number of consumer segments you want to profile, and the granularity of your brand comparisons. A typical national U&A study runs between 500 and 2.000 respondents. For low-penetration categories or multi-market studies, we advise on the sampling strategy during the alignment phase to ensure statistical validity at the analysis level you need.
Can U&A research feed directly into a segmentation study?
Yes, and this is one of the most strategically valuable setups Haystack offers. A U&A study can be designed from the outset to generate the attitudinal, motivational, and behavioural variables that will anchor a subsequent segmentation analysis. We build the two studies in sequence so that the segmentation model is grounded in real category and consumer truth, not just demographics.
