It’s a common assumption: Empathy Treks are designed only for consumer-facing brands – think packaged goods, retail, or lifestyle products. These industries might seem more suited to emotionally-driven research, where customer lifestyles and preferences are central to success.

But while B2C companies often benefit from immersive research, limiting empathy research exclusively to that domain overlooks its broader potential. In reality, Empathy Treks are just as powerful – and perhaps even more revealing – for B2B companies, where purchase decisions can be complex, high-stakes, and entwined with multiple stakeholders.

Why B2B Teams Need Empathy Just As Much

Business-to-business organizations face a unique challenge: understanding not only one “customer,” but an ecosystem of decision-makers, influencers, and end-users. Standard market research methods may not capture the full story. This is where empathy research shines.

 
• Experience the customer journey firsthand: Join teams on-site to observe workflows, tools, communication breakdowns, and daily frustrations.
 
• Uncover unspoken needs: Many B2B users have adapted to clunky processes or workarounds. Empathy Treks reveal these pain points that aren’t surfaced in surveys.
 
• Build credibility and trust: When you show up and invest time in someone’s real environment, it deepens relationships – critical in any B2B engagement.

Empathy interviews within B2B contexts help teams uncover non-obvious insights, such as how different departments interact with a tool or where miscommunications cause lost opportunities. These journeys inform product development, customer experience design, internal training, and even go-to-market strategies.

Empathy Treks in B2B research tap into the same goal as in B2C: deep human understanding. By breaking down the misconception that “empathy” only applies to end consumers, brands unlock hidden value and gain a competitive advantage where it’s least expected.

Read more about B2B Empathy Treks here →

Another frequent hesitation we hear from organizations is around cost. Empathy Treks sound immersive – and by extension, expensive. For lean teams, startups, or those new to qualitative research, it can feel like a luxury rather than a realistic investment. But this is one of the most persistent and limiting myths about empathy research.

While Empathy Treks do require more time and planning than, say, digital surveys, their value goes far beyond cost-per-deliverable. In many cases, immersive research actually saves money in the long run by avoiding costly missteps or uninformed product decisions. At SIVO, we help clients scope empathy work to fit their specific goals – not every trek has to be a multi-week, cross-country expedition.

You Don’t Need a Huge Budget to Gain Deep Insight

Empathy Treks are scalable and customizable. When designed strategically, smaller treks can deliver just as much impact as larger ones. Here’s why:

 
• Focused objectives: Many Empathy Treks are narrow by design – such as understanding a single stage in the buyer journey or identifying barriers to product usage. They don’t require dozens of participants.
 
• Regional vs. national: Localized treks can lower travel costs while still exposing key behavior patterns and emotional drivers.
 
• Layering with existing research: If your team already has quantitative data, an empathy trek can deepen and contextualize that knowledge – not replace it.

Cost vs. Value: A Shift in Perspective

It’s easy to look at a research initiative with upfront costs and compare it to more scalable market research methods. But empathy-based insights often result in precise, high-impact outcomes that would otherwise take months (or years) to uncover.

For example, a product design team may launch a new feature based on survey data, only to learn months later it’s underused because people misunderstand its function. A three-day, on-site empathy trek at the start could have revealed where communication was breaking down – saving development and marketing costs while driving adoption faster.

Think of empathy research as a long-term investment in customer understanding. It isn’t just spending more money – it’s spending smarter. As part of a strategic research portfolio, Empathy Treks often yield ROI in product success, user retention, innovation efficacy, and team alignment.

Bottom Line

No matter the size of your business or budget, empathy is something you can afford – and arguably, something you can’t afford to overlook. At SIVO, we design immersive research experiences that scale to your reality and connect you with the people who matter most. The result? Actionable, human-driven insights that are worth every step.

Read more about affordable Empathy Treks here →

Why surveys can't replace human-centered conversations

Surveys are a core component of many market research methods. They’re fast, scalable, and offer valuable quantitative data, especially when you're benchmarking opinions or tracking brand awareness. But when it comes to understanding the why behind consumer behavior – what drives decisions, emotions, and unmet needs – surveys often fall short.

Empathy Treks, in contrast, are a form of immersive qualitative research that involve stepping into customers' environments and lives. Through in-depth empathy interviews and real-time observation, these Treks uncover human truths you simply can't get from checkbox responses.

What surveys miss – and empathy research reveals

• Context: Surveys capture answers without environment. Empathy Treks observe real-world usage, workarounds, and routines.
• Emotion: You can't always quantify frustration, excitement, or confusion. But you can see and feel it in human-centered research.
• Unspoken Needs: People often don't know what to say in a survey. In conversation, stories surface that reveal pain points and desires they may not be consciously aware of.

For example, a company launching a new kitchen appliance may find in a survey that 80% of users like its design. But through an Empathy Trek, they might watch a user struggle to plug it in with wet hands while cooking dinner. That single observation could change the product’s materials, placement of controls, and even packaging instructions – insights that rarely come through multiple-choice questions.

This doesn’t mean qualitative research replaces surveys. In fact, they often work better together. But if your goal is deep customer understanding, especially during innovation or product development, empathy research methods like Empathy Treks provide richer, more actionable insights.

It’s not a matter of qualitative vs. quantitative market research – it’s recognizing that each has strengths. To grow, launch, or pivot with confidence, businesses increasingly combine both to get a full picture of their audience.

Why immersive research can flex to your timeline and scale

It’s a common concern: Empathy Treks sound powerful, but are they too time-consuming for your fast-paced business cycles? The reality is, when designed thoughtfully, these treks can be both efficient and scalable – even in agile environments.

At first glance, immersive research might seem like a luxury reserved for large-scale launches – but in practice, many organizations use Empathy Treks for quick-turn discovery, iterative development, and ongoing B2B or B2C innovation.

Here’s how Empathy Treks support scale and agility:

• Modular design: Empathy Treks aren't one-size-fits-all. Projects can range from a few days of fieldwork to an ongoing series of short engagements, tailored to the complexity of your goals.
• Rapid field execution: With the right planning and experienced moderators, empathy interviews and observational sessions can be scheduled, conducted, and synthesized quickly – often in as little as a few weeks.
• Plug-and-play talent: At SIVO, we offer both custom studies and On Demand Talent to help you match research expertise to your sprint cycles, enabling insights to flow continuously across phases.

For example, a healthcare tech team looking to refine their provider interface used a three-week Empathy Trek sprint to visit clinics, observe workflows, and conduct short empathy interviews. The findings weren't just fast – they immediately reshaped their next two design iterations.

Scaling doesn’t always mean more participants; it often means repeating small, focused engagements across user segments, geographies, or product lines. SIVO’s team has led scalable empathy research projects globally by building structured yet flexible frameworks that align with business timelines.

Immersive research isn’t at odds with efficiency. In fact, when applied strategically, the deep understanding it provides helps businesses make faster, more confident decisions – reducing the risk of costly missteps later. If your roadmap moves quickly, empathy-focused fieldwork might be the clarity tool you didn’t know you needed.

Read more about Agile methods in Empathy Treks here →

More than feelings: How Empathy Treks deliver strategic business insights

Because empathy is right there in the name, people sometimes assume Empathy Treks are about emotional resonance alone – like uncovering how customers feel but not what they do. In reality, these qualitative research experiences reveal far more than emotion. They generate consumer insights across functional, behavioral, and strategic dimensions.

During an Empathy Trek, researchers go beyond interviews to observe customers in context – in their homes, workplaces, or wherever relevant behavior happens. This full-spectrum approach captures the interplay between feelings, habits, environments, tools, and decision-making paths.

Here’s what businesses actually learn from a well-designed Empathy Trek:

• Workflow Bottlenecks: In B2B research, seeing how teams interact with a product uncovers inefficiencies and unmet tool needs.
• Feature Prioritization: Watching real-world product usage reveals which functions matter most – not just what users say they want.
• Customer Journeys: Observing the full arc of discovery, purchase, and post-use gives insights that surveys and analytics often miss.
• Cultural Nuances: Especially in global research, empathetic observation identifies language, habits, or systems that influence behavior.

For example, during an Empathy Trek with industrial equipment buyers, one organization discovered that buyers weren’t just influenced by specs – they struggled to get products approved internally. Armed with this insight, the company restructured sales materials to support internal pitching, improving close rates across teams.

While emotions are part of the story, the value of empathy research lies in how it integrates emotions with observations, actions, and business context. Empathy is the engine – but the destination is meaningful change. Whether you're developing a consumer product or refining enterprise software, Empathy Treks connect you directly to the real-world conditions that shape purchase, loyalty, pain, and delight.

Bottom line: Empathy Treks are designed to drive outcomes. They're not just about understanding what someone feels – they're about uncovering what your business should do next.