TrendSource, a full-service strategic consulting and market research firm based in San Diego, unveiled its health and safety market research suite this week, offering programs specifically tailored to provide brands with rapid data and actionable insight during the coronavirus pandemic. With methodologies geared towards health and safety compliance, customer perception and satisfaction, brand health, and product development, TrendSource helps businesses navigate the complex and rapidly-shifting marketplaces COVID-19 has thrown into chaos. 

For over 30 years, TrendSource has served Fortune 100 and 500 brands in grocery, retail, food service, and CPG, but according to Corey Hagler, TrendSource’s VP of Insights, “We’ve never seen anything like this.” Indeed, time has not been on brands’ side since the pandemic started, and customers’ in-store and omnichannel practices and preferences are shifting as quickly as the realities on the ground. 

“Each and every client we serve needed us to quickly pivot their program and it didn’t take us long to see that it’s a whole new game out there,” Hagler shared. “We knew we needed to develop programs that help businesses ensure health and safety compliance on a store-to-store and even employee-to-employee level, and we knew we had to help our clients begin to track how the pandemic has shifted consumers’ expectations, priorities, and, sad to say, budgets.”

TrendSource further adapted its best-in-class mystery shopping and competitor analysis programs to accommodate in-store realities as well as burgeoning online and omnichannel programs. With additional programs targeting brand health through social listening and sentiment analysis, TrendSource ensures that, whatever research questions COVID-19 is forcing brands to ask, there is a research program that can answer it. 

Market research has always been an essential ingredient in every brand’s success story, but with the onslaught of coronavirus and state-mandated closures, market research has become all the more essential. Indeed, Sarah Rowlett, TrendSource’s VP of Business Development has cautioned brands against cutting back their market research programs, though she understands the temptation to reduce costs as sales and profits fall. 

“It’s kind of like robbing Peter to pay Paul--sure you can save some money by pulling back on your market research programs, but how are you going to actually rebound as a company without it? Sure, we’re in the business of selling market research programs, but right now we’re just happy we can help businesses stay ahead of the curve...it’s tough out there.”