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What is B2B market research?

B2B (business-to-business) market research is how companies understand the professionals who buy, use, influence, and recommend their products and services. That includes executives, IT and software buyers, procurement leads, financial advisors, clinicians, dealers and channel partners, as well as the customers you already work with.

It spans everything from market sizing and segmentation to message testing and win/loss, and it overlaps closely with B2B customer research, the work of understanding the needs and experiences of the customers you already serve. Unlike consumer studies, B2B audiences are smaller, harder to reach, and far busier. Getting a senior decision-maker to give you twenty focused minutes is the hard part, which means engagement and depth are the whole game.

What is B2B market research?

What is B2B market research?

Addressing the limits of traditional B2B market research

  • Hard-to-reach, low-incidence professional audiences
  • Long surveys that busy decision-makers abandon
  • Thin, surface-level answers that miss the "why" behind a decision
  • One-and-done studies with no ongoing relationship to your customers

Why use Rival Technologies for B2B market research?

Companies across technology, healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, and agriculture use the Rival Technologies platform to reach professional audiences and get richer answers.

Reach professionals on mobile

Connect with hard-to-reach participants in real time through SMS notifications and reminders that fit between meetings and on the road.

Always-on customer access

Build a B2B insight community or customer advisory board for ongoing B2B customer research, with multi-touch feedback instead of one-off studies.

Voice, video, and screen feedback

Let participants show you the tools, workflows, and frustrations behind their answers, capturing context you can't get from text alone.

AI-accelerated probing and analysis

Powerful AI tools ask smart follow-up questions without long surveys, then quickly summarize open-end and video feedback.

Storytelling and reporting

Real-time toplines, robust quant reporting, and AI-generated insight reels make findings easy to share with stakeholders.

Explore the Rival platform

How companies use Rival for B2B market and customer research

B2B market research case study for food manufacturing

Delicious insights that drive sweet retail success

A major snack food manufacturer surveys distributors to help validate decisions form a retail perspective before products reach the shelf.

B2B case study for health and wellness companies

In-the-moment insights inform healthy innovation

A leading global medical technology company engages medical device sales reps and clinicians for ongoing and systematic feedback to drive innovation and growth strategies.

B2B case study for manufacturing and tractors companies-1

Driving agile decision-making with sales and marketing insights

A global leader in manufacturing agricultural, construction, forestry, and turf care equipment taps into dealership sales and marketing professionals for agile input on digital tools, services, content libraries, and workflows.

Rival's powerful insights platform supports a wide variety of B2B research objectives:

  • Buyer journey and decision-making research
  • Customer satisfaction and NPS tracking
  • Product and roadmap feedback
  • Message, positioning, and value proposition testing
  • Customer advisory boards and ongoing communities
  • Dealer, channel, and partner research
  • Brand and category tracking among professionals
  • Segmentation and account research
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Get faster, deeper insights

40%
completion rate within the first hour
800%
richer insights compared to traditional open-ends
87%
completion rate

FAQs: Using Rival for B2B market research

How is B2B market research on Rival different from traditional B2B market research?

Rival is mobile-first and conversational, replacing long surveys with short, chat-based interactions. Instead of asking a busy professional for twenty focused minutes at their desk, research fits naturally into their day and captures in-the-moment feedback rather than delayed recall.

What's the difference between B2B market research and B2B customer research?

B2B market research is the broader category, covering the full picture of a market: buyers, prospects, competitors, market size, and category trends. B2B customer research is a focused slice of that work, centered on the customers you already serve, their satisfaction, needs, and experience over time. Rival supports both, whether you're sizing an opportunity with prospects or running an always-on advisory community with existing accounts.

Who are the best B2B market research companies to work with?

The right partner depends on whether you need a research platform, full-service support, or both. Rival Technologies offers a conversational research platform for running your own agile, mobile-first studies and communities, while its sister company Reach3 Insights delivers full-service B2B research for teams that want experts to design, run, and analyze the work for them.

What types of professional audiences can you reach?

Rival supports research with executives, IT and software buyers, finance and procurement leaders, healthcare practitioners and clinicians, sales reps, dealers and channel partners, SMB owners, and your existing customers. You can engage your own customer and prospect lists or tap Rival Audiences for harder-to-source professional samples.

How does Rival keep busy professionals engaged?

Timely notifications, usually via SMS, and short conversational interactions fit into a professional's schedule. The experience feels more like messaging than research, which drives higher completion rates and richer answers from people who rarely finish traditional surveys.

Can we run an ongoing customer advisory board or community?

Yes. With Rival Insight Communities, you can stand up an always-on B2B insight community or customer advisory board, giving you continuous access to the people who matter most to your business and a ready audience for more specific studies.

Can we collect voice, video, or screen recordings from B2B participants?

Yes. Participants can share photos, voice notes, and unlimited video, which is especially powerful for seeing the tools and workflows behind their feedback.

How quickly can teams access and analyze the data?

Data is available in near real time through Rival's mobile toplines. Rival also offers robust quant reporting plus AI-accelerated tools to make sense of unstructured feedback and to create video reels.

What is Rival's pricing like for B2B market research studies?

Check out our pricing page to learn about our model, or reach out to us for more info.

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