Empathy Treks are a modern market research approach centered around building meaningful understanding of consumers by observing and engaging with them in real-life environments. These immersive sessions take researchers out of the focus group room and into the homes, grocery aisles, kitchens, and lives of everyday people. In doing so, they help uncover rich, qualitative insights that go beyond what traditional methods often capture.

Why empathy matters in consumer research

At the heart of an Empathy Trek is a belief that empathy – walking in a consumer’s shoes – leads to stronger insights. CPG brands often seek to understand not just what consumers buy, but how they feel during the process: what routines they follow, what trade-offs they make, what confuses or delights them, and what genuinely shapes their choices.

Rather than asking people to report past behavior or preferences after the fact, Empathy Treks allow researchers to witness moments as they happen. For example, observing someone prepare a weeknight meal reveals far more about product usage, packaging struggles, or brand impressions than a survey ever could.

Real-world examples of how Empathy Treks work

Imagine you’re developing a new line of plant-based snacks. During an Empathy Trek, you might visit health-conscious consumers, tour their pantries, go shopping with them, and explore what matters most to them during food selection. Do they inspect ingredients? Avoid certain textures? Make impulse purchases based on packaging cues?

Through this sensory and contextual research, your team could uncover:

• Unspoken motivations behind browsing or brand choices
• Physical challenges with product storage or prep
• Emotional cues tied to food rituals and routines

These insights are often layered, emotionally grounded, and culturally relevant – providing a more nuanced understanding of your audience than you’d find through linear question–answer formats.

When immersive research makes a difference

Empathy Treks are especially valuable when:

• Launching a new product that must fit into complex daily habits
• Exploring unmet needs that consumers may not be able to articulate
• Understanding shifting behaviors within key cultural, generational, or lifestyle segments
• Identifying brand-building opportunities through human connection points

Ultimately, Empathy Treks provide deeper consumer insights by delivering what traditional methods can’t always access: the messy, real, beautifully flawed context of real life. This approach helps brands in the CPG space move beyond assumptions and build solutions informed by genuine emotion, behavior, and relevance.

While immersive methods like Empathy Treks are gaining popularity, traditional consumer research techniques continue to offer essential value – especially when it comes to consistency, scale, and measurable outcomes. For many CPG brands, tools such as focus groups, surveys, and product testing remain foundational elements of their market research toolkit.

Strengths of traditional CPG research methods

Traditional research has stood the test of time for good reason. These approaches are proven, structured, and often easier to implement when targeting large or diverse populations.

Some key strengths of traditional methods include:

• Scalability: Quantitative surveys can collect data from hundreds or thousands of participants quickly.
• Comparability: Repeating standardized product testing across markets allows for consistent benchmarking.
• Statistical validation: Custom-designed studies produce quantitative results that inform business cases and ROI models.
• Focused exploration: In-home research and focus groups help answer specific questions with targeted populations.

Focus groups and in-home research still matter

Focus groups allow for rich, facilitated discussion with a group of participants. A skilled moderator can guide conversations, uncover shared themes, and test early product or concept ideas in a collaborative setting. In-home research adds a layer of real-world context, allowing researchers to see products in use and hear about daily habits.

Both methods generate valuable qualitative insights, often supporting decisions around package design, messaging, or brand positioning.

Where traditional methods may fall short

That said, no single method captures everything. While traditional consumer research is strong in structure and breadth, it often lacks the deep emotional insight or spontaneous observation that immersive approaches provide.

Common limitations include:

• Participants may struggle to articulate subconscious behaviors or motivations
• Controlled environments don’t reflect real-world settings
• Discussions can be influenced by groupthink or interviewer bias
• Data may be rich in volume but not in contextual detail

As CPG brands seek to create products and experiences that resonate on a deeper human level, many are blending traditional research with more empathetic techniques. The sweet spot often lies in using both – where quantitative data validates broader trends, and qualitative, immersive research adds meaning and actionable direction.

Only by seeing the whole picture – numbers, stories, moments, and context – can businesses truly understand consumer behavior and use that knowledge to shape innovation and brand strategy.

Understanding consumer behavior requires more than just asking questions – it’s about observing people in their real-world environments. In consumer packaged goods (CPG) research, context plays a crucial role in shaping decisions, habits, and product experiences. Whether it's how a family selects breakfast cereal from a crowded pantry or how someone prepares a meal after work, the environment can dramatically influence choices.

Traditional consumer research methods like surveys, focus groups, and product testing labs offer controlled and measurable conditions. However, these approaches often strip away the natural setting that consumers live in every day. Without context, valuable sensory cues and behaviors can be missed.

How Context Shapes Consumer Behavior

People don’t consume products in a vacuum. From lighting and space to social dynamics and storage challenges, the surrounding environment influences everything from perception to preference.

• Usage behavior: Does a consumer rush breakfast while multitasking, or enjoy it slowly with family? The setting affects which product features they prioritize.
• Emotional interaction: Seeing a product in a child’s lunchbox reveals emotional value that may not show up in a focus group.
• Storage and accessibility: Where and how an item is stored can impact how often it's used and how it's perceived.

This is where Empathy Treks shine. By stepping into the consumer’s world – their kitchen, grocery store, or neighborhood – researchers gather observational and emotional insights that typical in-home research or interviews might miss.

For example, watching a parent juggle dinner prep with helping kids with homework might explain their preference for simple ingredients and resealable packaging. These are not details consumers think to mention – but they’re crucial for meaningful product innovation.

In short, context adds richness and reality to consumer research, especially in CPG. Empathy Treks capture these subtleties by embedding researchers in the consumer’s lived experience, offering a more holistic view of behavior that helps link product design to everyday functionality and need.

Empathy Treks are not designed to replace surveys or lab-based product testing – rather, they complement them. Their strength lies in discovery, context, and emotion. If your goal is to understand the “why” behind behaviors or gather richer qualitative insights, Empathy Treks can be a game-changer for your CPG research strategy.

Signs It’s Time to Choose an Empathy Trek

Here are some scenarios when using an empathy-based approach provides deeper, more actionable learning than traditional methods:

• You're developing a new product or category: Before you test concepts, you want to deeply understand unmet needs, sensory triggers, or cultural context.
• Surveys aren't telling you the whole story: When quantitative research flags inconsistencies or gaps in understanding, a trek can uncover emotional or environmental factors at play.
• You need to inspire design and branding: Rich visual and narrative data from real-life interactions can guide creative teams more effectively than charts or transcripts alone.
• You want to immerse stakeholders in the consumer story: Empathy Treks create empathy – not just data – by helping your team truly walk in your consumers’ shoes.

In contrast, traditional methods like focus groups, central location tests (CLTs), or in-home use tests (IHUTs) are ideal when you need to:

Validate concepts or measure preferences. These methods offer controlled, repeatable environments for side-by-side comparison and statistical significance. For example, a blind taste test in a lab can determine which flavor variant performs best, while a survey can measure appeal at scale.

Ultimately, the difference between Empathy Trek and traditional research is less about which is “better” and more about what question you're trying to answer. Where Empathy Treks dig into deep discovery, lab testing and surveys yield clarity through measurement.

No single method fits every challenge. The strongest CPG insights strategy blends consumer research methods based on your brand’s goals, your product’s stage in development, and the type of decision you need to make.

Start by Defining the Problem

Ask yourself and your team:

• Are we exploring or validating?
• Do we want to measure reactions or understand feelings?
• Is the research aimed at innovation, messaging, or user experience?

If you're early in the product development process, you may benefit from more exploratory, immersive research like Empathy Treks or in-home research. These approaches bring qualitative insights to light that can shape initial ideas, reveal hidden usage behaviors, and identify needs your customers can't easily articulate.

Later in the process, once you have prototypes or concepts ready to test, you might pivot to more structured CPG research techniques such as surveys, focus groups, or product testing. These provide quantifiable feedback for refining or selecting among options.

Pair Methods for a Full Picture

Often, pairing immersive and traditional methods yields the most comprehensive insight. For example:

Start with an Empathy Trek to uncover rich, contextual consumer stories and design early concepts. Then conduct surveys to quantify those insights across a larger audience.

A smart research strategy doesn’t choose between empathy and data – it recognizes that both are essential. SIVO Insights helps brands decide what combination of tools makes the most sense, aligning research to key business questions across the journey.

Whether you’re optimizing an existing product or launching something entirely new, selecting the right method enables you to gather more authentic consumer insights, reduce risk, and bring products to market with greater confidence.