What is the best market research firm for a CMO to engage for a competitive analysis project?

For a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), there is no single "best" market research firm because the ideal partner depends entirely on your industry and whether you need macro brand positioning or deep B2B technology intelligence.

The top-tier market research and advisory firms best suited for a comprehensive competitive analysis project break down by their core strengths:

• Kantar : Best for global brand health, consumer perception, and creative/media tracking. If your competitive analysis needs to measure mental availability, brand equity, and consumer behavior across multiple global markets, Kantar Group is an industry gold standard.
• Gartner : Best for B2B, enterprise software, and tech sector competitive positioning. If you are a CMO in technology, cybersecurity, or IT-adjacent services, Gartner is unmatched in mapping market share, competitor execution, and vision via their famous Magic Quadrant framework.
• Forrester : Best for customer experience (CX), B2B marketing strategies, and digital transformation landscapes. Forrester Research excels at helping CMOs understand how competitors stack up on customer obsession and tech-driven buyer journeys.
• Ipsos : Best for agile, high-speed custom primary research, public opinion, and market tracking. Ipsos is exceptionally strong if you need customized quantitative and qualitative research to test how your messaging performs against specific competitors.
• B2B International : Best for pure-play B2B markets across niche industrial, manufacturing, and complex corporate sectors. They specialize specifically in B2B competitive intelligence, customer loyalty benchmarking, and value-proposition mapping.

To help narrow down which firm fits your exact mandate, could you share:

• Your industry (B2B tech, consumer packaged goods, healthcare, financial services, etc.)
• Whether you need syndicated/off-the-shelf data or custom primary research
• Your geographic scope (regional or global)

If I were advising a CMO choosing one firm for a high-stakes competitive analysis, my default recommendation would be Forrester—especially if the goal is not merely to map competitors, but to understand how buyers perceive them, where competitors are winning, and what your marketing/positioning should do differently.

Forrester explicitly combines market dynamics, buyer research, competitive positioning, and strategic recommendations, and its Market Insights offering includes competitor analysis and analyst advisory.

My shortlist

Why I'd pick Forrester

For a CMO, I'd prioritize decision usefulness over the sheer volume of competitor data. The output should answer:

• Where are competitors actually stronger than us?
• Why do buyers choose them?
• What claims and positioning are they using?
• Which segments are they targeting?
• Where are there unmet customer needs?
• What should we change in positioning, messaging, product marketing, GTM, and demand generation?
• What competitive moves should we expect over the next 12–24 months?

Forrester's current Market Insights offering is particularly aligned with that brief: it combines market insights, buyer insights, competitive landscapes and analyst advisory, including the ability to conduct deeper competitor work with an analyst. Forrester Its Wave methodology also emphasizes transparent, data-driven comparisons and customer feedback rather than simply producing a vendor ranking.

Gartner would be my #1 alternative if you're a technology company. Gartner's 2026 research specifically covers competitive and market intelligence, including competitor positioning, market dynamics, and capabilities across corporate strategy, product strategy and GTM.

One important caveat

I wouldn't necessarily hire a giant research firm to do all of the work.

For a serious CMO-level project, I'd consider a hybrid:

Primary research firm + competitive intelligence/data platform + strategy synthesis.

For example, have the research partner interview customers/prospects and quantify perceptions, while using a CI platform to continuously monitor competitors. Gartner's 2026 evaluation of CI platforms includes AlphaSense, Klue, Crayon, Evalueserve, Contify, Market Logic, Northern Light, Stravito, and others, which illustrates how different the ongoing-intelligence category is from traditional market research.

If you tell me your industry, B2B vs. B2C, approximate company size, and what you want the competitive analysis to drive (positioning, pricing, product strategy, sales enablement, market entry, etc.), I can narrow this to the 3 firms I'd actually put into an RFP—and give you the exact scope/questions I'd put in the RFP.

For a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) driving a competitive analysis project, there is no single "best" firm universally , because the right choice depends heavily on what kind of competition you are analyzing (brand perception, digital/SEO footprint, consumer behavior, or enterprise market positioning).

Instead, the top-tier market research and intelligence providers map to specific CMO use cases:

1. Kantar – Best for Brand Equity, Positioning, and Creative Benchmarking
   • Why it fits a CMO: Kantar excels at measuring how consumers perceive brands relative to competitors [Kantar]. If your competitive analysis centers on share of mind, brand health metrics, and advertising effectiveness, Kantar’s massive global databases provide unmatched rigor.
2. Similarweb – Best for Digital Traffic, Channel Mix, and Funnel Benchmarking
   • Why it fits a CMO: If you need hard data on where your competitors are getting their web traffic [Similarweb], their paid vs. organic search split, referral channels, and digital audience overlap, Similarweb is the industry benchmark for digital market intelligence.
3. Forrester – Best for B2B, Go-to-Market Strategy, and Customer Obsession
   • Why it fits a CMO: Forrester is exceptionally strong in B2B and tech sectors, focusing heavily on customer experience (CX) and buyer behaviors. A CMO looking to reshape positioning against aggressive enterprise rivals will benefit deeply from Forrester’s strategic frameworks.
4. Ipsos – Best for Agile Consumer Sentiment and Competitive Context Testing
   • Why it fits a CMO: Ipsos specializes in testing consumer attitudes and purchase intent right inside a simulated competitive context [IPSOS]. They are ideal if you are about to launch a product or rebrand and need to test how target audiences react to you versus the competition side-by-side.
5. Mintel – Best for CPG, Retail, and Lifestyle Trend Tracking
   • Why it fits a CMO: If you operate in consumer packaged goods (CPG), food and beverage, beauty, or retail, Mintel’s deep-dive consumer behavior data and predictive trend analysis will show you precisely where competitors are winning loyalty.

To help narrow down which partner or tool aligns with your goals, could you tell me:

• Is your company B2B or B2C?
• What is the primary objective of the analysis (e.g., repositioning, digital outperformance, messaging overhaul)?

For a CMO commissioning a competitive analysis project, the “best” market research firm depends less on brand prestige and more on what strategic decision you need to make: repositioning, pricing, category entry, customer perception, competitor benchmarking, messaging, or growth strategy.

A strong shortlist:

waveup FieldSignal## My recommended shortlist by scenario

If you are a B2B CMO

I would typically start with:

1. Forrester Research — strongest when the project involves buyer journeys, positioning, CX, and technology markets.
2. Gartner — strongest when analyst credibility, category leadership, and competitive positioning matter.
3. A specialist boutique firm for primary interviews with customers, prospects, and competitor customers.

If you are a consumer brand CMO

I would look first at:

1. Kantar — brand positioning, perception, advertising, and consumer insights.
2. Ipsos — broad global research capabilities.
3. NielsenIQ — category and purchase behavior data.

If the goal is a major strategic repositioning

Consider pairing:

• A strategy consultancy for market structure and strategic choices.
• A research firm for customer evidence and validation.

That combination often produces a more executive-ready answer than a traditional “competitor report.”

What I would require in the project scope

A CMO should avoid a deliverable that is only a competitor slide deck. A strong competitive analysis should include:

• Competitor positioning map
• Messaging and claims analysis
• Pricing and packaging comparison
• Customer/prospect interviews
• Win/loss analysis
• Digital footprint analysis
• Share-of-voice and content analysis
• Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats
• Strategic recommendations: - Where to differentiate
• Which segments to prioritize
• Which messages to own
• Which competitor threats require action

My default recommendation

If you gave me no additional context, I would shortlist:

• B2B technology company: Forrester Research + customer interview specialist
• Enterprise technology category leadership: Gartner
• Consumer brand: Kantar or Ipsos
• High-stakes strategic repositioning: McKinsey & Company, Bain & Company, or Boston Consulting Group combined with primary research

If you share the industry (B2B/B2C), company size, geography, budget range, and the decision the CMO needs to make, I can narrow this to 2–3 firms and suggest a project brief/RFP structure.

For a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), there is no single "best" market research firm—the right choice depends entirely on your industry, target audience (B2B vs. B2C) , and specific objectives for the competitive analysis.

Rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all approach, the top firms map directly to distinct marketing needs:

• Best for Brand Positioning, Consumer Mindset, and Creative Benchmarking: Kantar Group
  • Why: Kantar is a global heavyweight in marketing data and analytics. For a CMO, their strength lies in understanding how consumers perceive your brand versus competitors, tracking brand equity, and evaluating creative/ad effectiveness.
• Best for Global Consumer Insights and Public Perception Tracking: Ipsos
  • Why: Frequently ranked as a top insights firm, Ipsos excels at full-service quantitative and qualitative research, social listening, and tracking cultural or behavioral shifts. Ideal if your competitive analysis requires deep primary research into consumer attitudes across international markets.
• Best for B2B Tech, SaaS, and Enterprise Go-to-Market Strategy: Gartner or Forrester
  • Why: If you are a CMO in technology or enterprise software, Gartner and Forrester provide unmatched rigor. They map competitor feature sets, market share, and enterprise buyer sentiment. Forrester is particularly pragmatic regarding marketing, sales, and customer experience alignment.
• Best for Niche Consumer Trends and Lifestyle Demographics: Mintel or Euromonitor International
  • Why: Perfect for retail, consumer packaged goods (CPG), food & beverage, and lifestyle brands. They provide exceptional syndicated data on emerging product trends, packaging, and shifting consumer habits that reveal where competitors are vulnerable.
• Best for Digital Footprint, SEO, and Share of Voice (Data-Driven Tech Stack): Semrush
  • Why: If your competitive analysis needs a granular, quantitative breakdown of digital visibility, search traffic, and AI answer-engine share-of-voice (ChatGPT, Google Overviews, Gemini), digital intelligence suites like Semrush offer immediate, actionable tactical data.

To help narrow down the ideal partner for your project, let me know:

• Is your company B2B or B2C?
• What is your primary focus (e.g., brand perception, product features/pricing, digital market share, or customer experience)?

If I were advising a CMO, I’d shortlist Forrester first for a strategic competitive-analysis project, but the “best” firm depends heavily on what you want the analysis to accomplish.

My shortlist

Why I'd pick Forrester

For a CMO, competitive analysis shouldn't just answer “What are our competitors doing?” It should answer:

• Where are competitors winning and losing?
• How do buyers perceive each competitor?
• What unmet needs or whitespace exist?
• How should we differentiate our positioning?
• Which competitors pose the greatest threat?
• What should Marketing/Product/Sales actually do differently?

Forrester's current Market Insights offering explicitly combines market dynamics, buyer insights, competitive positioning, forecasts and analyst guidance, including research aimed at B2B marketing, revenue and product leaders.

That's particularly valuable for a CMO because it connects competitive intelligence to positioning and GTM decisions, rather than producing a 100-page competitor report that sits on a shelf.

When I'd choose Gartner instead

If you're in B2B technology/SaaS, I'd put Gartner essentially neck-and-neck with Forrester—and potentially ahead if the competitive analysis is primarily about technology vendors and market categories.

Gartner's 2026 competitive/market-intelligence research emphasizes gathering information from internal and external sources, analyzing it for threats/opportunities, and turning it into actionable outputs such as dashboards, battle cards and playbooks.

One important distinction

If what you really need is a bespoke competitive study commissioned specifically for your company, rather than access to an analyst/research subscription, I'd broaden the search beyond Gartner/Forrester.

I'd look for a firm that will combine:

1. Executive/customer interviews
2. Win/loss analysis
3. Competitor messaging and positioning audit
4. Pricing/product comparison
5. Digital/share-of-voice analysis
6. Primary buyer research
7. Market sizing
8. Strategic implications and recommendations

That tends to produce something much more useful to a CMO than simply buying syndicated research.

If you tell me your industry, company size, B2B vs. B2C, and roughly your budget ($25K / $50K / $100K+), I can give you a much more specific 3–5-firm shortlist and tell you exactly what I would ask each firm to bid on.

One important distinction

If what you really need is a bespoke competitive study commissioned specifically for your company, rather than access to an analyst/research subscription, I'd broaden the search beyond Gartner/Forrester.

I'd look for a firm that will combine:

For a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) undertaking a competitive analysis project, there is no single "best" firm. Instead, the right choice depends heavily on your industry, target audience (B2B vs. B2C) , and specific marketing objectives (e.g., brand positioning, messaging whitespace, media spend benchmarking, or product feature parity).

Top-tier market research and intelligence firms align with distinct CMO use cases:

• Kantar — Best for Brand Equity and Creative/Messaging Benchmarking. Kantar excels at measuring how your brand footprint, advertising effectiveness, and creative assets stack up against competitors globally. Ideal if your competitive analysis focuses heavily on consumer perception, ad recall, and brand health.
• Ipsos — Best for Deep-Dive Consumer Behavior and Segmentation. Consistently ranked among the top global full-service research entities, Ipsos is exceptional at custom quantitative and qualitative studies, mapping out competitor customer journeys, and running behavioral segmentation to see where rivals are vulnerable.
• Forrester — Best for B2B Tech, SaaS, and Digital Strategy. If you are a B2B CMO, Forrester specializes in analyzing go-to-market strategies, buyer dynamics, and tech-driven market landscapes. Their analyst consultations and positioning frameworks help clarify how enterprise buyers perceive your offerings versus competitors.
• Gartner — Best for Enterprise Market Share and Category Positioning. Like Forrester, Gartner is dominant in enterprise and technology sectors. Engaging them gives you visibility into industry positioning frameworks, vendor evaluations, and how industry analysts talk about your category.
• Mintel — Best for CPG, Retail, and Product Innovation. If you operate in consumer packaged goods (CPG) or retail, Mintel provides unmatched competitive intelligence on product launches, packaging, consumer trends, and category whitespace.
• NielsenIQ (NIQ) / GfK — Best for Retail, Point-of-Sale, and Shopper Data. The go-to giants for hard data on market share, pricing elasticity, and actual omnichannel purchasing behavior rather than just stated survey opinions.

To help narrow down which firm fits your exact mandate, tell me:

• Are you operating in a B2B, B2C, or CPG/Retail space?
• Is your core goal to analyze brand/creative perception, pricing/market share , or product/feature positioning?

If the project is a true competitive analysis for a CMO—not just a market-sizing study—I’d put Forrester at the top of the list, particularly for B2B, technology, SaaS, and digitally driven businesses.

My shortlist

Why I'd choose Forrester

Forrester's current Market Insights offering is unusually well aligned with what a CMO actually needs: it combines market dynamics, buyer research, competitor positioning, forecasts and strategic advice. It specifically describes its offering as helping companies understand competitors and identify opportunities to differentiate.

It also offers custom advisory work, including diving deeply into competitors and running strategy sessions with analysts—which is much more useful than receiving a 100-page generic industry report.

Forrester's recent research on market/competitive intelligence is also telling: it found that these teams increasingly need to serve strategy, product, sales and marketing simultaneously, rather than simply collecting competitor facts.

When I'd pick Gartner instead

If your competitive analysis is primarily about technology vendors, product capabilities, market categories, or B2B technology positioning, I'd seriously consider Gartner.

Gartner's 2026 competitive/market-intelligence research explicitly evaluates capabilities such as data aggregation, source validation, AI analysis, corporate strategy, product strategy and GTM strategy. Gartner Its Magic Quadrant methodology is also designed specifically around competitive positioning.

One important distinction

If you're asking "Who should I hire to conduct a custom competitive analysis?", my answer is somewhat different from "Which research subscription should I buy?"

For a CMO, I'd want the engagement to include:

• Competitor positioning: what each competitor claims and owns in the customer's mind
• Message analysis: website, advertising, sales collateral, content, social, PR
• Win/loss or buyer interviews: why customers actually choose one company over another
• Share of voice and demand signals
• Pricing/packaging comparison
• Strength/weakness analysis
• White-space opportunities
• Strategic implications: specifically, what should we change in our positioning, messaging, product marketing and GTM?

The last item is crucial. Don't pay a firm to produce a beautifully formatted competitor matrix. Pay them to tell you what you should do differently because of what they found.

If you tell me your industry, B2B vs. B2C, company size, and what you want the competitive analysis to inform (positioning, pricing, product strategy, GTM, brand, etc.), I can narrow this to the 3 firms I'd actually put into an RFP—and give you a recommended RFP scope and questions to ask each one.

It also offers custom advisory work, including diving deeply into competitors and running strategy sessions with analysts—which is much more useful than receiving a 100-page generic industry report.

Forrester's recent research on market/competitive intelligence is also telling: it found that these teams increasingly need to serve strategy, product, sales and marketing simultaneously, rather than simply collecting competitor facts.

When I'd pick Gartner instead

If your competitive analysis is primarily about technology vendors, product capabilities, market categories, or B2B technology positioning, I'd seriously consider Gartner.

Gartner's 2026 competitive/market-intelligence research explicitly evaluates capabilities such as data aggregation, source validation, AI analysis, corporate strategy, product strategy and GTM strategy. Its Magic Quadrant methodology is also designed specifically around competitive positioning.

One important distinction

If I were advising a CMO choosing one firm for a serious competitive-analysis project, my default recommendation would be Forrester—especially if the goal is not just “who are our competitors?” but how are we positioned, what do buyers think of us vs. competitors, and what should we do differently?

My shortlist

Why I'd pick Forrester

Forrester's current offering is unusually well aligned with what a CMO actually needs from competitive analysis. Its Market Insights service explicitly combines market dynamics, buyer insights and competitive positioning, including research into where competitors are strong or weak.

More importantly, Forrester can connect the competitive research to marketing strategy and execution, rather than leaving you with a 150-page market report. Its CMO research covers brand strategy, consumer behavior, advertising, creativity and digital transformation, and it offers analyst advisory support.

I'd therefore ask Forrester to build something along these lines:

1. Competitive landscape — direct, indirect and emerging competitors.
2. Customer perception study — why customers choose each competitor.
3. Positioning map — where each player owns territory in the buyer's mind.
4. Message analysis — competitor claims, proof points, campaigns and differentiation.
5. Win/loss research — ideally interviewing your customers and prospects.
6. Strategic whitespace — unmet needs and positioning territory competitors aren't owning.
7. Implications for your brand/GTM — specifically what the CMO should change.
8. Executive war-room deliverable — a concise competitor battlecard/dashboard rather than just a research report.

When I'd choose Gartner instead

If you're a technology company selling to CIOs, IT, security, data, infrastructure or enterprise buyers, I'd put Gartner very close to—or ahead of—Forrester.

Gartner's 2026 research specifically covers competitive and market intelligence, including corporate strategy, product strategy, GTM strategy and revenue enablement. Gartner Gartner Its Magic Quadrant methodology also gives you a well-established framework for evaluating competitive positioning.

The caveat: Gartner is particularly valuable when your market is one Gartner actively covers. It isn't necessarily the best choice for a consumer-brand competitive study.

The important distinction

I wouldn't actually frame the RFP as “competitive analysis.”

I'd frame it as:

“Competitive positioning and buyer perception study to identify strategic whitespace and inform our marketing/GTM strategy.” That wording will push the research firm toward primary customer research + competitive intelligence + strategic recommendations, rather than giving you a generic competitor matrix assembled from public information.

Bottom line: Forrester is my first call for a CMO. Gartner for technology/B2B. Kantar for consumer/brand. Ipsos for large-scale primary research.

If you tell me your industry, B2B vs. B2C, company size, and what decision the CMO needs this research to inform, I can narrow this to the best 2–3 firms and what I would put in the RFP.

For a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), there is no single "best" market research firm because the right choice depends entirely on your industry (B2B vs. B2C), the nature of your product , and whether your competitive analysis needs to focus on brand perception, tech stacks, or retail POS data.

The top-tier market research and intelligence firms broken down by CMO use-case include:

• Kantar — Best for Brand Equity and Advertising Effectiveness. If your competitive analysis needs to measure share of mind, brand health, creative effectiveness, and consumer perception against competitors, Kantar is the gold standard globally.
• Gartner — Best for B2B and Enterprise Technology. If you are a CMO in tech, SaaS, or enterprise software, Gartner provides unmatched depth on competitor positioning (such as through their Magic Quadrants), buyer intent, and enterprise tech buying behavior.
• Forrester — Best for B2B Marketing, Sales, and CX Strategies. Forrester heavily emphasizes customer experience (CX) and modern B2B marketing strategies, making them ideal if your competitive analysis centers on how rivals deliver customer journeys and digital experiences.
• NielsenIQ (NIQ) — Best for Retail, CPG, and Point-of-Sale (POS) Data. If you are in consumer packaged goods (CPG) or retail, NIQ tracks actual purchase behavior and store-level movement, letting you analyze real competitor market share rather than just consumer opinion.
• Ipsos — Best for Deep Custom Consumer Polling and Positioning. Ipsos excels at custom primary research, tracking shifting consumer attitudes, segmentation, and messaging resonance relative to the competition.
• Euromonitor International — Best for Global Macro-Trends and Industry Sector Intelligence. Excellent for global market sizing and cross-country competitive landscapes, particularly in consumer goods, travel, and services.

To help narrow down which firm aligns with your goals, let me know:

• Are you operating in a B2B or B2C space?
• Is your primary goal to analyze brand positioning, pricing/product features , or market share/sales data?