Retail market research

At DJS Research, we help retailers stay closely connected to the needs, behaviours, and expectations of their customers, turning insight into practical, commercial outcomes. Whether you're looking to fine-tune your customer experience, test new propositions, optimise store layout, or understand the drivers of loyalty, our retail market research brings clarity and confidence at every stage.

Our expertise in the retail sector

We partner with high street names, grocery chains, e-commerce players, and luxury brands to help them evolve and thrive in a complex, competitive marketplace. From strategic brand planning and pricing research to segmentation and path-to-purchase studies, we deliver the insights that shape stronger customer relationships, sharper propositions, and smarter commercial decisions.

We’re method-agnostic and insight-led, matching our clients’ goals with the right research tools across qualitative, quantitative and behavioural approaches. Every project is bespoke and designed with real-world application in mind.

Helping you navigate the challenges ahead

We understand that today’s retail landscape is defined by volatility, hybrid shopping journeys, and rising customer expectations. We help clients navigate the challenges in their sector including:

• Omnichannel as standard: Shoppers want convenience, consistency, and seamless transitions between digital and physical. We support our retail clients in understanding the full customer journey and where value can be added.
• Customer experience over transaction: Stores are no longer just places to buy, they’re environments for brand engagement, discovery, and loyalty. Store design, in-store media, and staff interactions all shape the experience. We use a blend of mystery shopping, in-store intercepts, accompanied shops and surfs, digital ethnography, eye-tracking, and CAPI exit surveys to deliver a complete view of the customer journey and identify actionable opportunities for improvement.
• Price vs. value: While price sensitivity across many retail sectors remains high, consumers don’t always buy the cheapest option; brand trust, perceived quality, and ethical considerations often carry equal weight. We help retailers and brands go beyond simply benchmarking prices with their competitors, by providing robust pricing research, using tools such as conjoint analysis, Van Westendorp, and Gabor-Granger to understand elasticity, willingness to pay, and perceived value. This enables our clients to optimise pricing strategies that protect margin while staying aligned with consumer expectations.
• Data-informed personalisation: Shoppers expect tailored experiences. Understanding segmentation, behaviours, and motivations is critical to delivering relevant, rewarding interactions. We have developed customer (and potential customer) segmentations for clients across a range of retail sectors including fashion, furniture and lingerie.
• Sustainability and ethics: From plastic reduction to responsible sourcing, ethics and sustainability now play a central role in consumer decision-making, with many prepared to switch brands when values don’t align. However, attitudes and behaviours in this space are often nuanced and inconsistent. We help retailers, brands, and NGOs make sense of these complexities through qualitative insight, quantitative analysis, and behavioural economics. Our work uncovers the real drivers behind sustainable choices and supports the development of authentic communication strategies and targeted interventions that nudge behaviour in a more sustainable direction.

Our retail sector team, led by Research Director and Retail Lead Gill Redfern, brings decades of experience translating customer understanding into actions that boost satisfaction, loyalty, and performance. 

To find out more about our extensive expertise in the retail sector and discuss how we can provide the actionable insight you need to meet your business objectives, contact our team today.