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TTB - R&D Survey

This survey is for founders and brand leaders at emerging e-commerce and CPG brands — anyone thinking about where their next customer comes from, and whether physical presence is part of that answer. Before asking anything, here's the case for why this exists: roughly 84% of transactions still happen in physical environments, yet most ad spend chases digital. Creator spend is hitting diminishing returns. Discovery increasingly needs an "occasion," not just an audience — brands like Little Spoon, Tecovas, and Ulta didn't skip the trust-building step before going physical, and it compounded. This is step one of building that with you, not just asking about you. (Media outlet, venue, or event partner? This survey isn't for you — reach out directly instead.)

Brand/company name

Contact name

Email

Section 1 — Company Context

What category do you sell in, and what channels matter most today?

Where do you currently discover new customers?

How do you define a successful physical-world activation or retail presence? How much does brand trust or values alignment factor into your physical-world activation decisions, if at all?

Section 2 — Measurement & Attribution

What do you currently track when a customer interacts with your brand in person?

Where do you feel most blind?

A
B
C
D
E

How do you connect offline interactions to online behavior today?

What attribution tools or reports do you trust most, and where do they fall short?

As third-party tracking declines, how are you thinking about first-party data collection outside of your website or app — including any physical or in-person touchpoints?

Section 3 — Operations & Tooling

What systems do you use to manage e-commerce, CRM, inventory, POS, or activation data?

What's most fragmented across your stack?

What data would make your team more confident about expanding IRL efforts?

Does your team treat retail/IRL and digital as one unified team, or separate departments?

A
B
C

Section 4 — Pilot Readiness

If you could test one new IRL discovery tool, what would it need to prove?

If a smart vending unit in a travel-retail location (airport, mall, hotel) could report SKU-level interaction data back into the tools you already use — would that change how you'd evaluate a pilot? What would you need to see first?

What would make you say yes to a pilot?

Thinking about what you currently spend on creators, pop-ups, or retail placement efforts — what would a monthly cost need to look like for a new IRL channel to feel worth testing?

What would block adoption?

A
B
C
D
E

Section 5 — Retail Scaling, Activation & Competitive Landscape

If you've pursued placement with a major retailer, how long did it take from first outreach to signed placement?

A
B
C
D
E

What was the biggest bottleneck in the process above?

What would meaningfully shorten your path from DTC-only to physical shelf?

Thinking about any pop-up or IRL activation you've run: what mattered most to its success, and what would you change next time?

Roughly what share of your marketing budget currently goes to creators/influencers?

A
B
C
D

If you could redirect some of that spend, where would it go instead?

What discovery or retail-placement platforms or services have you tried or considered, and where did they fall short?

Have you evaluated smart vending, automated retail, or in-person sampling tech (e.g. branded vending machines, smart kiosks, platforms like PopCom)? What made you move forward or pass?

If a discovery channel existed specifically in travel/transit environments (airports, rail stations, hotels) versus general retail or events — does that location type matter to your brand? Why or why not?

Are there upcoming moments where your brand would consider an IRL activation?