Sample research brief

Sample research brief

Before you commission research, you should see what you would actually receive.

This is a complete Arceon Competitor & Market Decision Brief — the same structure, the same evidence discipline, and the same willingness to say plainly what could not be established. Nothing has been tidied up for presentation.

The decision this brief answers

“Should [Client] launch a fixed-fee preventive-maintenance plan for independent restaurants in Gauteng — and if so, in which segment, at what price, and against which competitor position?”

The client in the sample is a South African supplier of commercial kitchen equipment and servicing, weighing predictable recurring revenue against the risk of selling a subscription it cannot serve profitably. It is the shape of decision we are asked to support most often.

What is in it

• The decision, its intended use, and what a useful answer had to contain
• Scope, and what was explicitly excluded
• The method, applied step by step
• The evidence base and how each source was graded
• Three source-dated competitor profiles, with competitor claims separated from verified facts
• A comparison matrix across the criteria that matter to the buyer
• Six findings, each carrying its own confidence level
• The commercial assumptions that decide the outcome, and the sensitivity that matters
• Limitations, evidence gaps, and the strongest counterargument to our own recommendation
• What would change the conclusion
• A recommendation and a gated 90-day action plan
• A source register

What it shows about how we work

• Confidence is graded per finding, and they are not all high. In this brief: two High, two Moderate, one Low, one Insufficient evidence. The weakest finding is the most commercially important one.
• We publish the case against our own recommendation, at full strength, in section 9.
• We do not manufacture a number we cannot support. The brief contains no market size, because no dependable current figure was available at this scope. A fabricated number would have been worse than none.
• We name the boundary of the method. Desk research can show that a problem exists and that competitors are selling against it. It cannot tell you what your customers will pay — and the brief says so.

A note on the conclusion. This brief returns MODIFY, not PROCEED. The findings did not support a launch, and we did not write one. We would rather show you an honest intermediate answer than a confident one the evidence does not carry.

View or download the full sample

Twelve pages, A4, including the source register, the comparison matrix and the confidence grading on every finding.

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The fee for this scope

The brief in this sample is our Competitor & Market Decision Brief — one decision, one market or segment and three competitors, from public-source evidence, delivered in 7–10 business days after payment and complete intake. Founding price US$750.

The fee shown inside the sample document is illustrative. No client paid it, and no engagement took place.