14 Best market research companies in the UK for reliable data and analysis

Looking for insights on the UK market? Whether you want to test new products, refine messaging or assess market opportunities, the right data helps you make informed strategic decisions.

A market research platform or agency can help, but choosing the right one matters. You need a partner who understands the UK market and provides accurate insights to guide your next move.

To make your search easier, we compared 14 top UK market research companies and platforms. Below, you’ll find a breakdown of their expertise, specializations and top use cases to help you find the best fit.

UK Market Research Firm	Location	Best For	Top Use Cases
Attest	London, UK	Consumer market research	– Brand tracking – Consumer profiling – Ad testing – Market analysis  – New product development
Brandwatch	Brighton, East Sussex	Social media insights	– Social media management – Brand monitoring  – Crisis management
Kantar	London, UK	Integrating data	– Survey design – Ad monitoring  – Enhancing consumer profiles with additional data
MESH Experience	London, UK	Marketing research	– Marketing effectiveness measurement – Customer journey mapping – Customer satisfaction research
Mintel	London, UK	Product trends	– Product development – Market entry strategy – Competitive benchmarking
Nielsen	London, UK (HQ: New York, NY)	Audience measurement	– Audience measurement – Marketing optimization  – Media planning
Qualtrics	London, UK (HQ: Provo, UT & Seattle, WA)	Customer experience research	– Customer experience – Employee experience – Employee exit interviews
Sago (formerly Schlesinger Group UK	London, UK (with global research facilities)	In-person focus groups	– Multi-country focus groups – AI-powered survey automation – Legal and clinical research solutions
SIS International Research	London, UK (HQ: New York City, NY)	Competitive intelligence	– Competitive intelligence – Market entry strategy – Industrial market research
SurveyMonkey	London & Dublin, UK (HQ: San Mateo, CA)	Online polls	– Online polls – Employee feedback  – Registration forms
Suzy	New York, NY	AI-driven market research	– Concept testing to evaluate new product ideas  – Online focus groups Competitor research
Vision One	London, UK	Neuromarketing	– Advanced B2B consumer research – New product development – Branding and communications
YouGov	London, UK	Customer shopping insights	– Shopping behavior analysis – Brand tracking  – Custom research solutions
Zappi	London, UK (HQ: Boston, MA)	Creative testing	– New product development – Creative and ad testing – Concept testing

14 market research companies to better understand your UK audience

Market research isn’t one-size-fits-all. Different companies specialize in different areas, from consumer insights and brand tracking to competitive intelligence and product development. 

Whether you need fast survey results, in-depth qualitative research or AI-driven analytics, choosing the right partner makes all the difference. Here are 14 trusted market research companies to help you get the insights you need.

1. Attest: Best for consumer market research

TL;DR: Attest is ideal for brands looking for fast, scalable B2C consumer insights with straightforward, predictable pricing.

📍Location: London, UK

✨ Specialties: Attest provides businesses with fast, reliable consumer insights through an intuitive research platform that connects brands with over 150+ million people across 59 countries. 

The platform’s mixed-panel approach and unmatched data training ensure accuracy from your consumer insights by combining machine learning and human research analysts. This setup delivers high-quality insights fast, with results in hours or days instead of weeks that will help your business to reduce risk and maximize ROI. And Attest’s AI features help you get to your key insights fast. 

With Attest, you can track trends, compare audience segments and test ideas with ease. The interactive dashboard turns data into clear takeaways, making it easy to analyze consumer opinions or compare responses between groups. Insights scale with business needs, so your team can run ongoing research without added complexity or cost inefficiencies.

Beyond its research technology, Attest offers expert support every step of the way. From survey design (including free survey templates!) to results analysis, you get guidance to ensure your research leads to meaningful, actionable insights. 

With tools for brand tracking, competitor analysis, creative testing and product validation, Attest gives you all the insights you need to stay ahead of the market with confidence.

✔️ Top use cases:

• Brand tracking: Monitor brand awareness, perception and sentiment to stay ahead of competitors.
• Consumer profiling: Understand customer preferences, behaviors and motivations to refine marketing strategies.
• Creative and ad testing: Test campaign concepts, messaging and visuals with real consumers before launch.
• Market analysis: Identify opportunities and assess demand in new and existing markets.
• New product development: Validate product ideas, test pricing and improve product-market fit before launch.

2. Brandwatch: Best for social media insights

TL;DR: Brandwatch is a digital consumer intelligence and social media management platform that helps businesses track online conversations, analyze media trends and manage social media.

📍Location: Brighton, East Sussex

✨ Specialties: Brandwatch is one of the leading companies in the social listening space. Their suite of social products is best for organizations looking to understand consumers and manage social media channels. Their platform offers a comprehensive suite of tools that covers B2C consumer intelligence, social media management, influencer marketing and media intelligence. They can help you track brand mentions, customer sentiment and industry trends across various online channels. 

The platform also provides tools for planning, scheduling and analyzing social media content, as well as an influencer marketing solution to connect brands with relevant creators. Beyond data collection, Brandwatch offers expert analysis and strategic guidance to help you make informed decisions.

✔️ Top use cases:

• Social media management
• Brand monitoring 
• Crisis management

3. Kantar: Best for integrating data

TL;DR: Kantar is a market research and data analytics company that provides businesses with consumer insights, brand tracking and advertising measurement through survey research and behavioral data.

📍 Location: London, UK

✨ Specialties: Kantar is a global insights agency that offers a wide range of market research and analytics services that help businesses understand consumer behavior and make data-driven decisions. While they provide extensive quantitative and qualitative research services, two offerings stand out: their data solutions and managed services. 

Their data solutions allow you to enhance survey research by integrating it with real-world data, like purchase behavior and ad exposure, for more accurate insights. Meanwhile, their managed services provide full research support, by handling everything from survey design and data collection to analysis and reporting. This makes it easier for you to access high-quality insights without in-house expertise.

✔️ Top use cases:

• Survey design and fieldwork management
• Ad monitoring
• Enhancing consumer profiles with additional data

4. MESH Experience: Best for marketing research

TL;DR: MESH Experience is a marketing effectiveness consultancy that helps brands understand how customers interact with them in real time.

📍Location: London, UK

✨Specialties: MESH Experience focuses on tracking real customer interactions across paid, owned and earned media. Their Real-time Experience Tracking (RET) method collects feedback as it happens using mobile diaries and SMS-based micro-surveys. This means you get a live look at customer experiences without relying on memory-based surveys. By analyzing these real-time insights, MESH helps you pinpoint which of your marketing efforts work best and how to improve customer engagement. 

They work with clients in FMCG, finance and telecoms, and offers expertise in data analytics, creative development research and mobile surveys. MESH Experience is also a company partner member of the Market Research Society. 

✔️ Top use cases:

• Marketing effectiveness measurement
• Customer journey mapping
• Customer satisfaction research

5. Mintel: Best for product trends

TL;DR: Mintel is a market intelligence agency that provides businesses with insights on industries, consumers and product trends to help them stay competitive.

📍 Location: London, UK 

✨ Specialties: Mintel provides market intelligence that goes beyond surface-level data, to help businesses understand their industry, competitors and consumers. One way they do this is through their competitor analysis, which will give you a clear picture of how your rivals market themselves, launch products and position their offerings. 

Mintel also excels in innovation research that helps businesses spot new trends and opportunities. For example, they track global product launches, packaging trends and new ingredients and flavors in the food and beverage industry. These insights can help you develop new products that match consumer demand and industry shifts to ensure you stay ahead in fast-moving markets.

✔️ Top use cases:

• Product development
• Market entry strategy
• Competitive benchmarking

6. Nielsen: Best for audience measurement

TL;DR: Nielsen provides audience measurement and media analytics that helps businesses track consumer behavior and improve marketing strategies.

📍 Location: London, UK (headquartered in New York City, New York)

✨Specialties: Nielsen helps businesses understand how people consume media, measure the impact of their advertising and optimize content strategies using real-world data. Their services span four key areas: audience measurement, media planning, marketing optimization and content metadata. 

This market research agency is best known for its audience measurement solutions, which track viewership across TV, radio and digital platforms to help brands and broadcasters understand audience engagement. Nielsen also provides media planning tools to help businesses choose the best channels for reaching their target audience, as well as marketing optimization services to improve ad campaign performance, and content metadata solutions to enhance content discovery.

✔️ Top use cases:

• Audience measurement
• Marketing optimization
• Media planning and strategy

7. Qualtrics: Best for customer experience research

TL;DR: Qualtrics is an experience management platform offering customer, employee, strategy and market research tools — with a strong focus on customer experience.

📍Location: London, UK (headquartered in Provo, UT and Seattle, WA)

✨ Specialties: Qualtrics offers a comprehensive suite of tools for gathering and analyzing feedback across customer experience, employee experience and strategic market research. Their platform enables businesses to track brand perception, segment audiences, test new products and measure employee engagement. With AI-powered analytics, businesses can quickly uncover key trends and deeper B2C insights.

Where Qualtrics really stands out is in customer experience management. Their CX tools help businesses capture real-time feedback, analyze customer journeys and optimize digital and in-person interactions to improve customer satisfaction and retention.

✔️ Top use cases:

• Customer experience 
• Employee experience 
• Employee exit interviews

8. Sago: Best for in-person focus groups

TL;DR: Sago (formerly Schlesinger Group UK) is a global market research agency that offers qualitative and quantitative research, innovative technology platforms and specialized healthcare and legal insights.

📍 Location: London, United Kingdom (with research facilities across the UK, US, France, Germany and Spain)

✨ Specialties: Sago helps businesses in all sorts of industries — from consumer goods and finance to healthcare and technology — to gather valuable insights. Their approach combines traditional qualitative and quantitative methods like focus groups and surveys with innovative digital platforms. For example, Methodify streamlines automated research, QualBoard facilitates online discussions, and QualMeetin enables virtual interviews. Together, these platforms make research faster and more accessible. 

With global research capabilities and in-person facilities, Sago provides organizations with comprehensive support. Lastly, their specialized expertise in healthcare (connecting businesses with patients and healthcare professionals) and legal research (trial and jury consulting) sets them apart.

✔️ Top use cases:

• Multi-country focus groups and in-depth interviews
• AI-powered survey automation
• Legal and clinical research solutions

9. SIS International Research: Best for competitive intelligence

TL;DR: These market research experts in B2B, consumer and healthcare, offer competitive intelligence and strategic consulting.

📍Location: London, United Kingdom (headquartered in New York City, NY)

✨ Specialties: SIS International Research provides traditional market research services, including qualitative and quantitative studies, competitive intelligence and strategic consulting. With a strong presence in B2B, consumer and healthcare research, they work across industries like IT, FinTech, healthcare and industrial markets to deliver data-driven insights.

Their standout services include focus group facilities for in-depth discussions with target audiences and strategy consulting to help businesses with things like entering new markets, improving their market position and growing their product or service offerings.

✔️ Top use cases:

• Competitive intelligence
• Market entry strategy
• Industrial market research 

10. SurveyMonkey: Best for online polls

TL;DR: An online survey platform with AI assistance for creating, distributing and analyzing surveys to understand your audience.

📍Location: London & Dublin, UK (headquartered in San Mateo, CA)

✨ Specialties: SurveyMonkey (recently acquired by Momentive) is a well-known name in online surveys that offers user-friendly tools with some helpful extra features for getting and analyzing data. They have hundreds of ready-made survey templates to help you get started quickly. 

One interesting feature, SurveyMonkey Genius, uses AI to help you build and analyze surveys. It can even create whole surveys from a few ideas, suggest the best types of questions and give you tips on making your surveys better. They also have a tool that analyzes open-ended answers and tells you if people’s feedback is generally positive, negative or neutral. SurveyMonkey also offers market research tools, complete with a global audience, giving you access to a huge group of potential respondents around the world.

✔️ Top use cases:

• Online polls
• Employee feedback 
• Registration forms 

11. Suzy: Best for AI-driven market research

TL;DR: Suzy offers a consumer insights platform, by combining AI, quantitative and qualitative research, and quality audiences in a single platform. 

📍Location: New York City, New York

✨ Specialties: Suzy is a platform for gathering consumer insights and offers tools for both quick, automated research and more in-depth studies. Suzy provides survey design tools, automated templates and AI-driven analysis. 

Suzy Live facilitates in-depth interviews and focus groups, while Suzy Audiences connects brands with their target customers.

✔️ Top use cases:

• Concept testing to evaluate new product ideas 
• Online focus groups 
• Competitor research 

12. Vision One: Best for neuromarketing

TL;DR: With innovative research methods and a full suite of services, Vision One helps businesses see what their customers truly think — beyond just words.

📍Location: Camden Town, London

✨ Specialties: Vision One offers custom B2B and consumer research using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods to help businesses gain actionable insights, test new products and improve brand messaging. This full-service market research company serves industries like finance, leisure and social research.

Where they really stand out is in their use of advanced research techniques like neuromarketing, eye tracking and Implicit Reaction Time Testing (measuring instinctive preferences to reveal deeper opinions beyond what people say).

✔️ Top use cases 

• Advanced B2B consumer research 
• New product development
• Branding and communications 

13. YouGov: Best for customer shopping insights

TL;DR: YouGov is a research and analytics company known for free public opinion and election data, alongside paid business solutions for consumer and brand insights.

📍 Location: London, UK 

✨ Specialties: YouGov provides real-time consumer insights through a mix of free public polling and premium business research tools. While individuals and organizations can access public opinion and election data for free, businesses can use YouGov’s paid research solutions for a deeper look at consumer behavior and brand performance. 

Two standout offerings are Shopper Intelligence and BrandIndex. Shopper Intelligence analyzes consumer shopping habits to help brands optimize pricing and monitor purchase trends. BrandIndex tracks brand health daily across 16 key metrics so businesses can measure brand perception and benchmark against competitors.

✔️ Top use cases:

• Shopping behavior analysis
• Brand tracking
• Custom research solutions

14. Zappi: Best for ad research

TL;DR: Zappi is a consumer insights platform that helps businesses test product ideas, improve ads and refine brand strategies using AI-driven research tools.

📍 Location: London, UK (headquartered in Boston, MA)

✨ Specialties: Zappi makes it easy for businesses to gather fast, reliable consumer feedback to shape better products, ads and brand strategies. Their platform lets users test product ideas, optimize ad campaigns and analyze shopping experiences — all with real consumer input. 

One of their standout tools is “Ask Anything,” which allows companies to get quick, customizable feedback on any topic. They also offer advertising solutions designed to fine-tune creative content at every stage. Users can select their target audiences and receive insights in under six hours, with access to historical data and industry benchmarks for comparison.

✔️ Top use cases:

• New product development 
• Creative and ad testing 
• Concept testing

Quick tips for choosing the right UK market research company

Market research companies may seem similar on the surface, but the way they operate, the industries they serve and the insights they deliver vary dramatically. Choosing the right research partner makes all the difference in securing actionable data. Here’s what to consider:

1. Do they understand your audience? A company with experience with your UK target market provides more relevant insights.
2. Are they experts in your industry? Research methods and best practices differ across industries; sector expertise matters.
3. Do they have a strong track record? Look at past work, client success stories or testimonials from businesses like yours.
4. Can they handle the scale of your project? Whether you need a niche study or a large-scale survey, make sure they have the resources.
5. Do they use the right research methods? Ensure their approach aligns with the type of insights you need.
6. Where does their data come from? A trustworthy research firm remains transparent about its data sources and quality control measures.
7. Do they go beyond just reporting data? The best research partners provide clear, strategic recommendations, not just numbers.
8. How do they work with clients? Communication style, collaboration and reporting frequency all impact the experience.
9. Will they deliver insights on time? Delays make research outdated before you can use it.
10. Will their findings add real value? The right research shapes better decisions and business strategies.

A good research partner doesn’t just collect data — they provide insights that help you make smarter, more confident decisions. If you’re looking for a firm in London, check out our local guide for top market research agencies in London.

Interested in agencies beyond the UK? Attest has a global reach, plus we’ve put together guides for the top market research companies in the US and top international market research companies.

Better understand your target audience with the right UK market research company

The best company for market research is one with people on the ground in your target market and a deep understanding of your key audiences. Whether you’re entering a new market, refining your messaging or launching a product, market research helps you make informed decisions with confidence. 

The right market analysis tools give you the data needed to validate strategies, spot opportunities and stay ahead of the competition.

A great research partner helps you:

✅ Understand your customers: Whether expanding to the UK or launching new products, research uncovers customer needs and preferences so you can position your brand effectively.

✅ Stay ahead of competitors: Learn from others’ successes and mistakes to avoid pitfalls and refine your strategy.

✅ Test before launch: Validate product concepts and prototypes with real consumers to spot opportunities for improvement before going to market.

Want to see how market research companies in the UK can help you? Businesses like GoCardless have used Attest to uncover key insights and refine their strategies.

This UK-based FinTech company needed a fast and reliable way to quantify customer pain points and address payment challenges. Using Attest, they identified eight key pain points in customer experience and improved the clarity of their value proposition by 20%.

Attest’s simple platform has enabled the GoCardless team to find out a really wide range of crucial information about our market quickly and reliably. The platform gives us the confidence to run market research that we know will reveal or compound actionable knowledge about our market

Siamac Rezaiezadeh, Director of Product Marketing at GoCardless