Enquirer Consulting Group

Reachable Buyer Map

Prepared for Denene Rodney · Zebra Strategies · August 2026
Research work like this has two different buyers who rarely sit in the same building: the organization that needs the answer, and the research firm that has already won the study and cannot reach the people inside it. This map covers where both sit in the US, who signs, and roughly how many there are. It describes the market rather than your business, and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
Research and insights firms
The buyer who already holds the budget and the deadline. A firm that has won a national study and cannot recruit the sample inside it is not shopping, it is solving. Short cycle, repeat once it works, and almost invisible from outside, because that work rarely carries the subcontractor's name.
Who signs: research director, VP of research operations, project director, partner or principal.
3,700 to 6,000
US marketing research and public opinion polling firms; the range is two different counting definitions, establishments against verified active companies
Advertising, media and creative agencies
Where campaign testing is bought and where the timing is set by somebody else's launch calendar. Agencies rarely hold a standing panel, so the need appears sharply and gets solved quickly, and the person who feels it is usually not the person who owns the client relationship.
Who signs: chief strategy officer, head of planning, group strategy director, multicultural or inclusive marketing lead, new business director.
11,000 to 13,000
US advertising agencies verified as active employers; broader counts that include sole practitioners run many times higher
Large employers with an in-house insights function
The direct buyer: slowest to reach and largest to land. At this scale insights is a department with its own budget line rather than an item inside marketing, and the community-facing work often sits with a second stakeholder who has to be sold separately from the first.
Who signs: VP of consumer insights, head of market research, chief marketing officer, head of inclusion and community engagement.
11,000 to 11,500
US employers at 1,000 people or more, the scale at which an in-house insights function usually exists
Public health agencies and departments
Buys on a published cycle rather than on a moment. Grant windows, fiscal years and procurement calendars are set in advance and posted publicly, which makes this the one segment on the page where the right week to make contact is knowable rather than guessable.
Who signs: health officer, director of community health, health equity officer, communications director, and the grant program lead.
2,600 to 3,000
local health departments across the US, with the state health agencies sitting above them
Health systems, plans and care organizations
The sector that treats trust, access and outcomes as one conversation and funds research accordingly. Long to sell into and recurring once it lands, because member and community research is a repeating obligation rather than a one-time project.
Who signs: chief marketing officer, VP of community health, health equity officer, member experience lead, population health director.
6,000 to 6,500
US health care and social assistance employers at 250 people or more
Foundations, advocacy and community organizations
Real money and a genuinely hard list. Grantmaking entities are registered, but nothing public separates the ones that fund or commission research from the ones that never will, so this segment gets built by reading what organizations actually publish rather than by filtering a register.
Who signs: program officer, director of research and evaluation, communications director, executive director.
Registered, but not filterable
the research-funding subset is not identified in any public filing; built by reading published work rather than by buying a list

Where the openings are

1
Two buyers, one channel. The organization that needs the answer and the firm that needs the recruit are different sales, different vocabulary and different cycle lengths. A referral channel keeps returning to whichever of the two made the introduction, because that is the door it already knows how to open.
2
One of these segments publishes its own timing. Public health and government buying runs on grant windows and fiscal calendars posted in advance. That is not a market you have to catch at the right moment. It is a market you can put on a schedule and work the same way every year.
3
In this market the gap is distribution, not credibility. Reaching audiences that do not answer other people's surveys is the hard part, and that is the ground your firm already claims publicly. Putting it in front of a few thousand named insights, strategy and equity leads who have never seen it, on a schedule, and tracking what comes back, is mechanical work.
Built from public registries covering US business establishment counts, employer benefit-plan filings and public health agency listings, current to the latest published year. Counts are banded deliberately. Establishment counts and verified-company counts use different definitions, which is why two bands above are wide. Workforce bands use plan participants as a headcount proxy, so they indicate scale rather than exact staff numbers. Foundation and advocacy activity is described rather than counted.
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