FOR INVESTMENT MANAGERS & FINANCIAL SERVICES

A modern guide
to industry &
market tracking
How investment, FinServ, and FinTech leaders can stay
on top of what’s new and what’s next – and make more
data-driven decisions

This guide is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information
or other material as investment, financial, legal, tax or other advice.
Table of contents
01 02
Getting ahead of Keeping an eye on
consumer the industries and
sentiment and brands that matter
market trends to your portfolio

03 04
Building a tracker Tracking
that delivers your portfolio
results companies’ target
audiences

05 06
Analyzing your Optimizing your
tracker results brand tracker

07
Getting started

This guide is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information
or other material as investment, financial, legal, tax or other advice.

A modern guide to industry & market tracking 2

CHAPTER 01

Getting ahead of consumer

sentiment and market trends
In today’s feedback economy, consumers are using
their power to sway markets faster than ever, which
is why it’s important to understand consumer
sentiment and market shifts. A great way to do this
is to rely on industry and brand trackers, a type of
research study that monitors key metrics for industries,
product categories, and brands, such as awareness,
perceptions, and loyalty—the types of early indicators
for how people will respond to new launches, price
changes, IPOs, corporate scandals, and so much more.

If your firm is on the buy side, you’ll depend on market

data and proprietary insights that help make better
decisions about purchasing securities and managing
investment portfolios, pensions, and hedge funds. On
the sell side, staying on top of the trends that affect
your clients and their financial performance is essential
and provides a unique competitive advantage.

Whether you’re looking to expand into new

markets, discover how macroeconomic forces
influence stock valuations, track emerging category
adoption, or get ahead of earnings cycles, industry
and brand tracking can help you collect insights
over time to meet investment goals with timely
market research that propels your firm forward.
CHAPTER 02
Keeping an eye on the industries and
brands that matter to your portfolio
Investment management companies rely on a broad
range of metrics to better guide investment decisions
– from sales transactions to earning per share and cash
flow estimates, the amount of information available
is almost endless. Increasingly, more investors are
looking at nontraditional data sources, including survey
data to expand their datasets and help minimize some
of the strategic risks inherent in investment decisions.
So, what’s the value of integrating survey data into your
decision-making process?
Going beyond the transactions for deeper,
proprietary insights from survey data
From an investment standpoint, transactional data
is extraordinarily valuable in revealing a clear uptick
or downturn in sales, which has a clear impact on the
company’s short term financial well-being. But what
the transactions do not reveal is where consumer
sentiment is heading or why consumers are behaving
the way they are.
Surfacing intentions is what makes survey data
invaluable: Not only can you ask your respondents
questions such as “How much did you spend on food
last month?” but you can also ask them whether that
is more or less than what they spent before. You can
also ask questions that help you understand what
they’re worried about and what they think the future
might hold.
While transactional data will tell you that sales at a
particular brand rose in March, that data can’t give you
the backstory. You’ll also need to know why people
chose that brand over another, what they purchased,
why they purchased it, whether they’ll buy again—
these are the real insights that give you the fullest
possible picture to inform the decisions you make
about your investment portfolio.
A modern guide to industry tracking 4
CHAPTER 02
Enriching your datasets with
survey research
Industry and brand tracking, which are done through
consistent survey research, should be part of every
portfolio manager’s strategy. In this way, you can keep
an eye on your target markets and industries and stay
ahead of any meaningful inflections and changes
to market conditions, consumer sentiment, brand
loyalties, and more.
Popular use cases for industry and
brand tracking
• Track consumer behavior trends: Ask questions
about purchase drivers, such as cost or availability, to
help understand the dynamics of consumer trends.
• Identify emerging categories and players:
Keep track of new developments and potential
competitors in a category. For example, White
Claw disrupted the alcohol category with hard
seltzers, launching what effectively became a
new industry in 2016. Big brands, such as Corona®,
didn’t enter the category until 2019.1 But by June
2020, White Claw® still held significant market
share, illustrating how an emerging company can
get a leg up on larger, established competitors.
• Monitor competitive dynamics and perception:
Even in a crowded category, investment and
portfolio managers can rely on an industry tracker
to monitor competitive dynamics and metrics such
as awareness, purchase, intent, NPS, and loyalty.
• Keep an eye on adoption and usage trends
within a category: In 2021, for example, canned
beverage companies competed for wallet share
of consumers who were shifting from drinking
beverages at home to ordering drinks at bars and
restaurants. 2 Measuring adoption, usage, and
attitudes through an industry tracker can uncover,
perhaps even predict, swings in usage trends.
1 Forbes
2 Vox
Any and all trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.
A modern guide to industry & market tracking 5
CHAPTER 03

Building a tracker that

delivers results
Refining your tracker structure Creating a tracking questionnaire

An industry / brand tracker is essentially a survey A typical industry tracking survey includes questions
sent regularly to the same audience at a predetermined, about brand funnel metrics, including awareness,
specified cadence. Although the specific respondents consideration, usage, and the competitive landscape.
may change from survey to survey, their profiles will
be similar, garnering feedback from a consistent
demographic.

To help achieve consistency, a tracker survey has two

sections: screener questions, which hone the audience,
and the survey questionnaire, which collects insights
for your study. Structuring the screener section with
demographic questions allows you to further segment
your results for additional insights.

For example, an investment firm that had been tracking

the health and fitness industry since 2019 was on the
leading edge of how consumers’ habits and preferences
would change due to the pandemic in the summer of
2020. Using an industry tracker helped them discover
that many Americans planned to invest in home gym
equipment – rather than waiting for transaction data to
tell the story after the fact.

Brand funnel and associated tracking metrics

A modern guide to industry & market tracking 6

CHAPTER 03: BUILDING A TRACKER THAT DELIVERS RESULTS

Measuring your brand funnel

Sample questions to collect data based on funnel metrics

Brand Awareness: Unaided and Aided

Brand awareness measures how familiar people are
with a brand or product.

Unaided awareness: Example:

These questions don’t prompt respondents, helping
to capture the brand with top-of-mind awareness. “When you think about streaming
services, which brand first comes to
mind?”

Aided awareness:
Sometimes called “brand recognition,” respondents Example:
will express knowledge of a named brand or product
when prompted, or aided, with a stimulus (e.g., list of “Which of the following Home
brands, logo, or ad). Health and Fitness brands have
you heard of?”
• Peloton
• NordicTrack
• Echelon
• Precor
• Nautilus Inc.
• Strava
• Lululemon Mirror

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CHAPTER 03: BUILDING A TRACKER THAT DELIVERS RESULTS

Brand funnel metrics

Brand Familiarity

A “familiarity” question can gauge how familiar Example:

respondents are with a particular brand, using a Likert
scale to group answers into measurable categories. “How familiar are you with Salesforce®
CRM software?”
• Very familiar
• Somewhat familiar
• Not familiar
• I never heard of this brand

Brand Usage

Understanding consumers’ brand usage helps Example:

create a more robust dataset that gives institutional
investors deeper, more meaningful insights about “Please indicate which of the
an industry’s competitive landscape. Brand usage following “Buy Now Pay Later”
questions help answer questions about how
frequently respondents purchase a given product or
services you use regularly.
service, and from which brand.
(Select all that apply.)
• Afterpay
In this way, it’s possible to measure whether • Paypal Pay in 4
respondents have purchased a brand in the past, if • Klarna
they’re using it now and how frequently, and whether • Affirm
they plan to purchase from competitive brands. • Sezzle
• LZip (formerly QuadPay)
• GoCardless
• Other (please specify)

Pro tip: Understand “lapsed” users by asking brand usage questions multiple times but with different time
frames. For example, “Have you ever used . . .” vs. “Have you used in the past 3 months . . .” Writing questions
in this way can be an early predictor of churn.

Any and all trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.

A modern guide to industry & market tracking 8

CHAPTER 03: BUILDING A TRACKER THAT DELIVERS RESULTS

Brand funnel metrics (cont.)

Brand consideration/preference/
purchase intent

Include questions that ask respondents whether they Example:

plan to purchase from a particular brand in the future.
“How likely are you to purchase or
an electric vehicle (EV) for your
next car?”
• Very likely
• Somewhat likely
• Not too likely
• Not likely at all

Pro tip: Consider add-on questions, such as where consumers purchase (online or in-store), to track and
predict consumer behaviors and market shifts to inform investment decisions.

A modern guide to industry & market tracking 9

CHAPTER 03: BUILDING A TRACKER THAT DELIVERS RESULTS

Brand funnel metrics (cont.)

Brand attributes and associations

Brand attributes are associations consumers have with Example:

a brand or product in its overall category.
We would like to know whether you associate the
Because brand perceptions matter when it comes to following characteristics with each brand listed. Select
managing a portfolio, start by asking questions that all that apply. If you have never heard of a particular
establish what consumers expect from the category brand, leave those boxes blank.
and establish these as brand attributes. Then ask
respondents to rate brands based on their most
important attributes.

Pro tip: This approach will help you see how consumers perceive various brands so that you can assess how
much consumers are willing to pay for a particular product or service and shelf-life of trends.

A modern guide to industry & market tracking 10

CHAPTER 03: BUILDING A TRACKER THAT DELIVERS RESULTS

Brand funnel metrics (cont.)

Brand Favorability

This attribute gathers data about how favorably Example:

consumers feel about one brand compared to others.
For example, consumers may be asked about a “How favorable do you feel
software they MUST use for their job, but if they were toward the Salesforce brand
decision makers, they might choose an alternative.
of CRM (customer relationship
management) software?”
• Very favorable
• Favorable
• Somewhat favorable
• Somewhat unfavorable
• Unfavorable
• Very unfavorable

Brand Loyalty

For investment managers, understanding the loyalty Example:

toward your portfolio brands is an essential metric
to track. One way to gauge loyalty is to ask survey “How likely are you to
respondents about their willingness to recommend a recommend this company
given brand; this type of survey question is called the
Net Promoter Score® or NPS.
to a friend or colleague?”

Brand and industry tracking surveys can also

present questions that allow you to dig deeper,
collecting insights on other attributes that matter
most to investors (e.g. value for money, quality, intent
to purchase).

A modern guide to industry & market tracking 11

CHAPTER 04

Tracking your portfolio companies’

target audiences
Why quality data matters

Finding the right group of survey respondents – your work with a panel provider that supports technologies
audience – is one of the most important yet overlooked and best practices to detect fraud and ensure
variables in a tracking study. To collect good data that respondents are engaged in the survey experience.
will inform your investment decisions, it’s crucial to
accurately target the right audience and to ensure the
Feature focus: The Momentive online panel
people you reach provide thoughtful responses.
incorporates machine learning and AI, to
detect fraudulent panelists and improve the
Using an online panel gives investment firms and
quality of how a survey is structured for better
financial service providers hundreds of targeting
completion rates. Our advanced algorithms can
options. For example, you may want to target
help companies understand and cluster groups
respondents based on employment status, industry,
of panelists based on specific behaviors, and
or company size.
analyze unstructured data, like open-ended
text questions.
But online panels are only as good as the respondents
they’re made of. And because survey data will support
investment decision making, it’s more than essential to

A modern guide to industry & market tracking 12

CHAPTER 05
Analyzing your tracker results
Uncover insights in your data
Brand and industry trackers are designed to collect
data over time, whether that’s annually, quarterly,
monthly, or more often—depending on what
frequency your portfolio needs. The value of this data
is that trends are revealed and tracked over time,
usually in small, incremental changes. But sometimes
these can happen in larger spikes; both results offer
enormous value.
Monthly tracker: Investment companies aided awareness
• A monthly tracker can gauge competitive
landscape, revealing incremental changes
that might indicate, for example, an emerging
brand within an established category.
• A quarterly tracker can help analyze
market sizing, brand usage and loyalty,
and new opportunities for growth.
• An annual tracker can provide insights on year-
over-year performance of certain metrics, such
as consumer sentiment and purchase intent
ahead of the holiday shopping season.
A modern guide to industry & market tracking 13
CHAPTER 05: ANALYZING YOUR TRACKER RESULTS

AI-Powered Insights: Momentive trackers incorporate AI-powered insights, eliminating the need to
manually sift through hundreds of filters to discover the insights that matter most to your portfolio. This
exclusive feature instantly serves up statistically relevant changes to key metrics, highlighting segments
that shift the most.

Taking action

Success is all about having an edge, which means about the client’s business in ways that are simply
having access to information that’s exclusively yours not available through typical channels. It’s this type of
can differentiate your firm from others. For example, proprietary research that will truly resonate with clients
if you’re trying to demonstrate to a potential client and set your firm ahead of the rest.
that you’re more than simply a source of capital—that
you’re a partner in their success—you can rely on your
industry tracker to reveal clear, perhaps new, insights

A modern guide to industry & market tracking 14

CHAPTER 05: ANALYZING YOUR TRACKER RESULTS
Taking ownership of insights
It’s also important to not let the data do all the talking.
If taken out of context, numbers have the power to
mislead, which can have potentially devastating effects
on investing and portfolio management. Insights
teams are best equipped to accurately interpret results
by highlighting the most important insights, sharing
intuitive and easy-to-understand data visualizations,
and providing guidance on what the data means.
When used wisely and responsibly, trackers are
powerful story-telling tools for creating a competitive
edge, inspiring action, and driving growth.
A modern guide to industry & market tracking 15
CHAPTER 06
Optimizing your tracker
Over time, your use of industry and brand tracking
will become more sophisticated, and you’ll uncover
opportunities to apply insights in ways that can
differentiate your firm. This is especially important as
market conditions continue to fluctuate and predicting
future performance becomes harder than ever. How
can you make the best possible investment decisions
when financial, market, and economic data lags weeks
behind reality?
Fresh data is the most accurate data
In short, investment firms require agility and speed to
insights, with meaningful, accurate data delivered in
hours, not months.
An ongoing and optimized tracker is capable of
real-time adaptations when it’s clear that market
conditions are changing. For example, an investment
firm was running a daily brand tracker to measure
sentiment about one of their portfolio companies. But
considering consumer behavior changes related to
the COVID-19 pandemic, the firm needed new types
of information. They were able to easily add questions
to their tracker and begin collecting that new data the
next day.
Tracker frequency
How frequently you measure depends on your
investment goals and what you’re trying to learn at a
given point in time. Likewise, the type of tracking you
need depends on a range of factors and timing, from
earnings cycles to upcoming IPOs and more.
Fast-growing and emerging categories may need
more frequent tracking research.
A FinTech leader, for example, may need a weekly
tracker to understand the context around when,
how, where, and why consumers use their platform
and then use that data to create hyper-relevant
campaigns, modify existing offerings, and understand
where there is room to grow. Once established, more
mature categories and established brands can take a
monthly or even quarterly pulse on consumer behavior
and trends.
CHAPTER 06: OPTIMIZING YOUR BRAND TRACKER
Tracker frequency
How frequently you measure depends on what you’re
trying to learn at a given point in time. The type of
brand tracking you need depends on a couple of
factors, such as where you are in your product
lifecycle, your competition, and the stage and maturity
of your company.
Fast-growing companies in quickly changing markets
might need frequent brand tracking research, while
mature industries might only track during planned
periods of change. You can choose how frequently
you’d like to run your tracker—annually, quarterly,
monthly, weekly, on an ad hoc, or continuous basis.
But tracking macro market movements or long-term
trends isn’t the only use for brand tracking. Companies
can use tracking to measure the impact of marketing
campaigns, product launches, or even news cycles.
For more established products and categories, you still
want to continue tracking against your goals, but the
goals might be different from before. For example, for
a growth beverage brand like White Claw®, you may
want to closely track awareness, consideration, brand
perceptions and NPS, but for a more mature brand like
Corona® beer, since it already has very high awareness,
you may want to set goals specific to purchase, repeat
purchase, brand loyalty.
Any and all trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.
A modern guide to industry & market tracking 17
CHAPTER 06: OPTIMIZING YOUR BRAND TRACKER

Raymond James uncovers

exclusive insights about
tech markets
Like other investment services
firms, Raymond James
researchers, market analysts, and
fund managers work under time
pressure to make crucial calls
that can lead to shifts in market
valuations. They rely on survey
data as part of the exclusive
insights they share with their
investor clients.
Recently, they needed to uncover
exclusive insights about the tech
market for an investor report, a
feat they were able to accomplish
quickly by launching a study with
Momentive. Within a few days,
they were able to share a hot-off-
the-press research report with
powerful insights valuable to their
investment clients.

We were able to draw conclusions in our

research, both positive and negative, for specific
companies. It’s an invaluable tool in helping us
provide unique research to buy-side clients.”
Aaron Kessler
Managing Director and Senior Analyst
Raymond James

A modern guide to industry & market tracking 18

CHAPTER 07

Getting started
Uncover insights in your data

We designed this guide to help investment firms,
financial services providers, and portfolio managers
effectively use industry and brand trackers to enrich
your existing business intelligence datasets with
proprietary, exclusive survey research that presents a
more complete picture of market trends, consumer
behavior, and competitive landscapes.
Momentive brand and industry tracking solutions offer:
• Longitudinal research platform, with access to an
always-on statistical analysis platform, where you
can easily compare brand funnel metrics for your top
portfolio companies and measure what changed,
when, and why.
• AI-powered insights so you don’t have to manually
sift through hundreds of filters to discover the
hidden gold.
Work with a partner to launch
projects quickly.
While selecting a survey platform, designing and
delivering surveys, and analyzing results can seem
overwhelming, the truth is simple: it doesn’t have to be.
Working with a partner whose experience and expertise
span decades, millions of surveys, and countless hours
managing projects can mean you’ll never miss an
insight that could have major market impact.
Ready to get started?
Contact one of our research
experts to begin planning your brand and
industry tracking strategy today.

• Access to a team of expert researchers who can

Learn more Contact sales
help customize trackers according to your specific
needs and in line with industry-proven methodology.
And, we’ll arm your team of analysts with research
best practices and custom survey templates, so you
can launch projects as quickly as needed.

• Data consistency by using the same quality data

sources and demographic balancing for each wave,
excluding respondents from prior waves, so you
can be confident that your results are accurate,
representative, and relevant.

About Momentive
Momentive is a new type of agile experience management company that delivers intuitive, AI-powered solutions built for the
pace of modern business. We power the brave, curious, and ambitious who want to reshape their customer and employee
experiences, products, industries—and our future. We put people at the center of our technology, and we’re here to collaborate
with those who advocate for equality. Learn more at momentive.ai. 010321

This guide is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as investment, financial,
legal, tax or other advice.
A modern guide to industry & market tracking 19
Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain &
Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.