What should customer research reveal about sustainability expectations?

Customer research should give customers room to express their concerns and values, including views that challenge the organisation's assumptions about sustainability. The practical discipline is to question the questions themselves, listen to surprising answers and let customer concerns inform the story the business tells. Research designed only to optimise existing business goals can miss the opportunity to understand customers' environmental, social and cultural priorities. A 2025 finding from Bain & Company, covering global B2B automotive, packaging, chemicals, machinery, metals, and construction and building products businesses, found that Half of B2B customers already buy more from their more sustainable suppliers, and nearly 70% plan to accelerate those purchases over the next 3 years. Understanding sustainability expectations therefore matters to the commercial relationship, not just the wording of sustainability communications.

Customer research should establish whether buyers expect a partner to have a clear sustainability vision alongside useful technical capabilities. For Yokogawa, 24 stakeholder interviews and a global quantitative survey across four markets, supported by competitor and desk research, tested whether the established Precision Making platform could stretch to address sustainability. Customers wanted a partner with its own clear sustainability vision, and precision was already capable of carrying that meaning. The work explored how a technical benefit could connect to the real-world challenges Yokogawa T&M's audiences were trying to solve. A useful research brief therefore tests both the expectations customers bring to a partnership and whether the existing brand proposition can credibly meet them, rather than assuming sustainability requires a separate story.