There isn't one thing called a market research survey. Brand awareness surveys, concept tests, pricing studies, satisfaction surveys — these are all market research, but they answer completely different questions. Running a satisfaction survey when you actually need a pricing study wastes everyone's time and hands you data you can't act on. There are at least six distinct types, and choosing the wrong one for your situation is worse than not surveying at all. Below is each type, the business question it answers, and the trigger that means you should run it.
The 6 Types of Market Research Surveys
Type | What it answers | When to run it |
|---|---|---|
Brand awareness survey | Do people know you exist, and what do they think? | Before a campaign, after a rebrand, or as a recurring benchmark |
Concept testing survey | Will people want this before you build it? | Before investing in development |
Pricing study | What price range can the market actually bear? | Before launch or a repricing decision |
Customer satisfaction survey | How are you doing after purchase? | On a recurring cadence — monthly or quarterly |
UX & product feedback survey | What's broken in the product? | After shipping a feature or when retention drops |
Customer exit survey | Why did they leave? | Automatically, when a customer cancels or churns |
Brand awareness survey. Measures whether your target market recognizes you and what they associate with the name. The business question is "do people know we exist, and what do they think of us?" Run one before a major campaign to set a baseline, after a rebrand to see what stuck, or on a fixed cadence to track recognition over time. If you can't say what share of your market has heard of you, this is the survey that tells you. Start with a brand awareness survey.
Concept testing survey. Tests demand for a product, feature, or positioning before you commit engineering time. The business question is "will people actually want this?" Run it when you have an idea but haven't built it yet — the entire point is to catch a weak concept while changing course is still cheap. It surfaces the dealbreakers and the must-have features that decide whether the thing is worth building. Validate the idea first with concept testing.
Pricing study. Finds the price range the market will accept rather than the one you guessed. The business question is "what can we actually charge?" Run it before launch, or before any repricing decision where getting it wrong costs you either margin or volume. A good pricing study gives you a defensible range and an optimal price point, not a single number pulled from a competitor's website. Map the range with a pricing study.
Customer satisfaction survey. Tracks how existing customers feel after they've bought. The business question is "how are we doing post-purchase?" Run it on a recurring cadence — monthly or quarterly — because the value is in the trend, not any single score. A satisfaction reading that's slipping quarter over quarter is an early churn warning long before the cancellations show up. Track it with a customer satisfaction survey.
UX & product feedback survey. Pinpoints where users get stuck inside the product. The business question is "what's broken?" Run it right after shipping a feature, or when a retention or activation metric drops and you need to know why. Timing matters: send it close to the moment of friction, while the user still remembers exactly what went wrong. Diagnose the friction with UX feedback.
Customer exit survey. Captures why customers leave at the moment they leave. The business question is "why did they go?" Run it automatically on cancellation or churn, so you collect the reason while it's fresh and quantifiable. Wait a month and the answer softens into "it wasn't a fit"; ask at the moment of cancellation and you get the real reason. Done right, it tells you whether you're losing people to price, missing features, or a competitor — three problems with three different fixes. Set up an automated customer exit survey.
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Which Type Do You Need?
Work backward from the decision you're trying to make:
Launching or repositioning a brand? Run a brand awareness survey to baseline recognition before you spend on the campaign.
Have an idea but haven't built it? Run a concept test to confirm demand before development.
Setting or changing your price? Run a pricing study to find the range the market will bear.
Want to track customer health over time? Run a satisfaction survey on a fixed cadence.
Retention dropping or users seem confused? Run a UX feedback survey to find the friction.
Customers churning? Run an exit survey to learn why.
The trap is reaching for whichever survey feels familiar instead of the one that matches the question in front of you. A satisfaction survey can't tell you what to charge, and a pricing study can't tell you why people are leaving. Match the survey to the decision, not to habit.
Notice that the six types also split by timing. Concept tests and pricing studies are pre-decision — you run them before you commit, to reduce the odds of an expensive mistake. Satisfaction and exit surveys are post-decision — they measure what's already happening so you can correct course. Knowing which side of that line your question sits on usually narrows the choice to one or two types before you've read a single example.
Most research programs eventually run all of these — but if this is your first survey, start with the one that answers your most urgent business question.
SegmentOS has pre-built templates for each study type above — with a 30M+ consumer panel you can deploy against immediately. No sample recruiting required. See all templates →
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What is a market research survey?
It's a structured questionnaire used to collect data from a target market to guide a business decision. But "market research survey" isn't one thing — it's an umbrella for at least six types, including brand awareness, concept testing, and pricing studies, each built to answer a different question. The right one depends on the decision you're making.
What are the main types of market research surveys?
Six common types cover most needs: brand awareness, concept testing, pricing studies, customer satisfaction, UX and product feedback, and customer exit surveys. Each answers a distinct business question — from whether people know your brand to why customers churn — so the type of market research survey you choose follows directly from your goal.
Which market research survey should I run first?
Start with the one that answers your most urgent business question. Launching a brand, run awareness; validating an idea, run a concept test; setting a price, run a pricing study. Don't default to a familiar format — running the wrong survey for your situation gives you data you can't use.
What's the difference between a satisfaction survey and an exit survey?
A customer satisfaction survey measures how current customers feel, run on a recurring cadence to track trends. A customer exit survey runs once, at cancellation, to capture why someone left. Satisfaction is an early-warning system; exit is a post-mortem. You need both, but they answer different questions at different moments.
When should you run a market research survey?
Run one whenever you face a decision that guesswork would make expensive — before a launch, a rebrand, a price change, or a build. Some surveys are triggered by events (a concept test before development, an exit survey at churn); others run on a fixed cadence, like quarterly satisfaction tracking. Match the timing to the survey type.
