Customer behaviour, channel economics and the rules, with the sources shown
Short, evidence-led pieces from our research base: how patients choose a clinic, travellers choose a stay, buyers shortlist software and shoppers find a brand, what a customer costs to acquire and keep, and what you may say in each market. Every figure carries its source and date
Hotels
Distribution, direct booking, what a guest costs and what the engines say when a traveller asks where to stay
HotelsWhat a booking actually costs
Base commission is the smallest part of what a marketplace booking costs. The full stack, the cancellation gap, and where rate parity is now unenforceable.
HotelsDirect is now the minority channel for independent hotels
Independent hotels booked 63 percent of their 2025 business through marketplaces. Why direct share keeps falling, and the order in which it can be recovered.
HotelsTravellers now plan with AI before they search, and the shortlist is written from sources you do not own
More than half of travellers plan with AI tools. An answer names two or three properties, mostly from guides and reviews rather than hotel websites.
HotelsYour booking engine is on another domain, and that is where your marketing data disappears
The guest jumps from your site to the engine and the trail breaks. The five-step fix, in payback order, and the one setup that cannot be fixed.
HotelsIsland resorts hold the highest rates in the industry and the heaviest distribution costs
The five highest-rate hotel markets tracked are all islands. They are also the most channel-dependent, which makes every point of direct share worth hundreds per booking.
HotelsWhat 34 hotel owners and managers said they wanted, when asked directly
Our own study of 34 owners and general managers who requested an audit: who they are, what they run, and which growth problems they name first.
Clinics
Patient behaviour, procedure economics and the advertising rules that decide what a clinic may say
ClinicsPatients now ask an AI before they search
In June 2026, AI tools overtook Google search as an influence on US patients choosing a doctor. The numbers, the sources, and the three things a clinic should change first.
ClinicsA surgical patient costs about $610 to acquire, the highest in medicine
Patient acquisition cost by specialty in 2025–26, why it keeps rising, and the three places between enquiry and consultation where most of the money is lost.
ClinicsAll-on-4 is the most compared purchase in dentistry
Full-arch implant patients compare cost, clinics and countries before calling anyone. The numbers behind the segment, the prompts patients ask, and what an implant practice should publish.
ClinicsHair-transplant demand is rising and trust is the bottleneck
Patients per surgeon are up a fifth since 2021, women's share is rising, and 59 percent of surgeons report black-market clinics in their city. What a hair clinic, at home or in Istanbul, should publish to be named.
ClinicsWhat a clinic may say in public
The rules that govern clinic marketing in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the US and Turkey, what they forbid, and the informational assets every one of them permits.
Ecommerce
Acquisition economics, the list, and what happens when a shopper asks a model what to buy
EcommerceWhat a D2C customer actually costs
Meta CPMs rose 13 percent in a year and beauty CPMs rose 33 percent. The margin arithmetic to run before adding budget, and why most ad problems are not ad problems.
EcommerceThe list is the margin
Email returned £41 per pound in the DMA 2026 tracker, and automated flows drive up to 41 percent of email revenue from 5 percent of sends. Why most brands still under-invest in the channel they own.
Software
Founder-led growth, outbound benchmarks and the buyer who now asks an AI which software to trust
SoftwareHalf of B2B software buyers now start their research with an AI assistant, not Google
By March 2026, 51 percent of B2B software buyers started research with an AI chatbot more often than with Google. The numbers, the caveats, and what a software vendor should change first.
SoftwareNobody owns go-to-market
The first customers come from the founder's credibility. Growth stalls when that well is dry. The measured case for systematising before hiring, and what a written sales playbook actually changes.
SoftwareCold outbound returns between 0.5 and 3.4 replies per hundred emails
Two large 2025 to 2026 datasets put average cold email reply rates at 0.45 percent and 3.43 percent. Why both are right, what the February 2024 sender rules changed, and where the outcome is really decided.
SoftwareOnly 55% of middle managers can name one of their company's top five priorities
The famous 70% strategy failure rate is folklore. What research actually shows is sharper: plans die in the gap between the people who wrote them and the people who must run them.
Software43% of failed ventures never found product-market fit
CB Insights' 2026 post-mortem data shows what actually kills new ventures. The economics of a cheap real test versus a confident plan, and what a good validation build contains.
SoftwareFour findings appear in almost every diagnostic we run
Before strategy, a diagnostic. The four findings that surface in almost every mid-sized company we examine, why they hide from the inside, and the order in which to fix them.
AI
Where AI adoption actually returns, and how to measure whether the engines name you
AI95% of enterprise AI pilots return nothing
MIT found 95% of generative AI pilots deliver no measurable P&L impact. McKinsey and BCG data show why, and what the successful minority do instead. The sequence an owner should run.
AIShoppers now ask AI what to buy
AI-referred traffic to US retail sites rose 138 percent year on year and now converts better than average. What that changes for a D2C brand's product pages, reviews and content.
AIHow to audit your clinic's AI visibility in an afternoon
The method behind point one of the Business Scan: how to choose the prompts, how to run them, how to score named, mentioned and absent, and what to do with the result.
Let’s shape outcomes
Let’s start building partnershipKey shifts, emerging trends and what they mean for business
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