How much does consumer research cost for a D2C brand in India?
Answer
It depends on three things: what you need to know, how many people you need to hear from, and whether you’re paying for a custom study or a standard read. A custom study is usually priced per project, because it’s built around your questions. A standard read is priced up front, because it’s the same read every time: Foydy’s founding pilot, for example, is ₹25,000 for 50 completed responses, with the price locked for 12 months.
Five ways brands find out, and what each costs
Every brand is already paying for consumer feedback in some form, even if it doesn’t call it research.
| Option | What you pay | What it tells you | What it can’t tell you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Launch and watch sales | The launch itself: stock, listings, marketing | Whether people buy the first time | Why they don’t buy again, until the money is spent |
| Ratings and reviews | Nothing up front | What the people who chose to write one thought | What everyone else thought |
| Friends, staff and your WhatsApp group | Your time | Early problems, fast | What people who don’t already like you would think |
| A custom research study | Priced per project | Whatever you design it to ask | How you compare with other products, unless that’s built in |
| A standard in-home read (Foydy) | ₹25,000 for 50 completed responses in the founding pilot, price locked for 12 months | Whether people who fit your buyer would buy it again after two weeks at home, at what price, and why | Questions outside the standard read |
The first three look cheap because the cost is hidden. A launch that sells once and then fades has paid for its research in unsold stock.
What drives the cost
Four things move the price of any consumer research, whoever runs it.
How many people you need to hear from is the first. The second is how narrow your buyer is: people who buy shampoo are easy to find, first-time parents in smaller towns who buy a particular kind of baby care are not. The third is how long people use the product before they answer, because two weeks of real use asks more of everyone than a first impression. The fourth is whether you need a questionnaire written from scratch for your product, or a standard one that is the same for every brand.
What you’re really paying for
You’re paying to change a decision before it’s expensive to change.
That’s the useful way to judge any of the options above. Before you spend on research of any kind, write down the one decision the answer will change: the price, a promise on the pack, whether to scale, which variant to launch. If no decision would change whatever the answer, you don’t need research yet. If one would, compare the cost of the research with the cost of getting that decision wrong. For a price, for example, that cost lands on every pack you sell (see What price will Indian consumers actually pay for my product?).
What this means for your brand
Pick the option that answers the decision in front of you, and count the hidden costs of the cheap ones. If the decision is whether people will buy it again, and at what price, the sample report shows what that answer looks like.
Sources
- Foydy pricing (founding pilot: ₹25,000 for 50 completed responses, price locked for 12 months).