Outsourced Research

Understand your customers well enough to grow.

Most companies make expensive decisions based on incomplete customer understanding. UXArmy changes that with rigorous, human-led research across Asia Pacific and globally, conducted in the field and in local languages, and anchored to the business outcomes that matter to you: revenue growth, customer loyalty, and competitive advantage.

10K+
Years in APAC researchs
20+
Countries covered
20+
Languages conducted
78K+
Panel members
cheat sheet

Business decisions backed by research at

Agoda Amway Motorola Starhub PropertyGuru Grab UOB Dulux Lazada SEEK Visa M1
What we solve

Your customers know something your data doesn't

Revenue dashboards tell you what is happening. Customer research tells you “why” and what to do about it. The companies that grow fastest in competitive markets are the ones that invest in understanding customers at a depth that their competitors don’t.

UXArmy is commissioned when a business faces one of three problems. If any of these sounds familiar, you’re in the right place.

Customers are leaving and you don't fully know Why

Churn is rising. NPS is flat. Repeat purchase is down. Your retention data shows the pattern but not the cause. The gap between what customers do and why they do it is where revenue is lost.


UXArmy goes directly to your customers through interviews, contextual observation, diary studies, and focus groups to surface the real reasons they stay, leave, or switch to a competitor. Not inferred from clickstream. Heard directly, in their own words, in their own environments.

What this unlocks:
Evidence-backed retention strategy. Prioritised fixes ranked by customer impact. Leadership-ready findings that move faster than a quarterly survey cycle.

You're building but you're not certain customers want it

A new product. A new feature. A new market. You have a hypothesis built from internal data, team intuition, and stakeholder pressure. Before you commit the build budget, you need external validation from the people who will actually use it.


UXArmy tests your assumptions before they become expensive mistakes. Concept validation, prototype testing, home visits, and in-depth interviews reveal whether the problem you’re solving is real, whether your solution fits, and what it would take to get customers to switch.

What this unlocks:
Confidence to invest or pivot before build. Investor-ready customer validation. Reduced product risk across markets.

You're losing ground to competitors but can't see why from the inside

Customers are choosing alternatives. Your product hasn’t changed. Your pricing is competitive. But something in the experience the perception, the journey, the expectation is pulling them away. Internal teams can’t see it because they’re too close.


UXArmy puts your customers and your competitors’ customers in the same room or the same field. Through comparative research, mystery shopping, and competitor usability studies, we surface the perception gaps that don’t appear in your analytics.

What this unlocks:
Clear competitive positioning grounded in customer perception. Prioritised experience improvements that move the needle on consideration and switching.

Every research engagement UXArmy runs is anchored to a business outcome
We do not deliver research reports. We deliver the customer understanding your leadership team needs to make better decisions β€” on retention, investment, product direction, and competitive strategy. Research is the method. Revenue impact is the measure.

Why UXArmy

You've probably tried one of these already

Most organisations arrive at outsourced research after one of two experiences. Understanding why those experiences fell short is the fastest way to explain why UXArmy is different.

The traditional research agency

Credible on paper. Slow in practice. The proposal process takes weeks. The methodology is pre-packaged. The fieldwork is subcontracted to local vendors you've never met. The report arrives three months later by which point your team has already made the decision it was supposed to inform.

In APAC specifically, many global agencies field research through local subcontractors with no direct relationship to your business. The quality of insight is only as good as the briefing chain and briefing chains lose fidelity.

The result: Expensive research that arrives too late to change anything.
Doing it in-house

Your product manager runs customer calls. Your marketing team sends a survey. The findings feel useful but leadership wants more rigour before making a significant investment. The sample is too small. The questions are leading. The synthesis is incomplete.

In-house research also pulls your team away from the work they were hired to do. Every hour a product manager spends recruiting participants and transcribing interviews is an hour not spent on product decisions.

The result: Low-confidence findings that don't move the business forward.

UXArmy is the third option
Agency-grade research rigour conducted by experienced researchers, not subcontractors. Technology-enabled speed that compresses timelines without compressing quality. An APAC-native team that has been conducting research across Southeast Asia, Australia, India, and beyond for over a decade. And a scope that adapts to what you actually need not what fits our delivery model.

What makes us different

Built for APAC. Built for business speed

APAC-native. Not APAC-adapted.

UXArmy has been conducting research in Asia Pacific for over a decade not managing it from a Western headquarters. Our researchers are in-market across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, India, and beyond. We conduct research in more than 20 languages, including Mandarin, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Malaysia, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Bengali and more.

This means research that captures how customers in your markets actually think and behave not a Western framework applied to an Asian context..

Business-first. Not method-first.

UXArmy begins every engagement with a business question, not a research design. We work backwards from what you need to know and why to determine the right methodology, market, and sample. If the business question shifts during the engagement, the research design adapts with it.

This approach means findings are always relevant to the decision at hand. No research for the sake of research. No deliverables that sit in a folder.

Technology-enabled delivery.

UXArmy's own research platform accelerates unmoderated testing, multilingual transcription, and analysis reducing cost and turnaround time without replacing researcher judgement. Technology is how UXArmy delivers the rigour of a specialist agency at a pace that fits your product or campaign cycle.

The result: faster insights, lower overhead, and findings that arrive while the decision is still open.

Flexible scope. No forced packages.

From a single-country study to a multi-market research programme spanning APAC, EMEA, and the Americas. From one study to a multi-year research partnership. From full end-to-end delivery to specific research operations support.

UXArmy fits around your team's existing capability covering what you don't have, complementing what you do.

Research methods

Research that goes where your customers are

Most companies think of customer research as something that happens on a screen a survey sent by email, a usability test on a prototype, an interview over video. UXArmy does all of that. But understanding customers at the depth required to make confident business decisions often means going further.


It means sitting in a customer’s home while they do their grocery shopping. Visiting a store as a mystery shopper to understand how your brand is experienced at the point of purchase. Following a customer through their working day to understand where your product fits and where it doesn’t. Research that happens in the real world, not in a lab.

In-context and field research
Contextual inquiry

Observe customers using your product or service in their real environment not in a lab. Reveals behaviours and workarounds that interviews alone never surface.

Home visits

Understand how customers interact with your category in the context of their daily lives. Used for FMCG, financial services, healthcare, and consumer electronics research across APAC.

Mystery shopping

Experience your brand through a customer's eyes at the point of sale, in the service interaction, or at the moment of competitive comparison. Reveals experience gaps invisible from the inside.

Diary studies

Capture how customers engage with your product or category over days or weeks. Reveals longitudinal behaviour patterns and unmet needs that a single session cannot.

Ethnographic observation

Immersive field research that reveals the cultural context shaping customer behaviour. Particularly valuable for market entry research in new APAC markets.

Remote and platform research
User interviews

In-depth 1:1 conversations remote or in-person conducted in the customer's language. The fastest way to understand motivation, decision-making, and unmet needs.

Focus groups

Group discussions that surface shared perceptions, category attitudes, and competitive positioning. Conducted in-person or online, in local languages across APAC and beyond.

Usability testing

Evaluate how customers interact with digital products websites, apps, and prototypes. Identifies friction, confusion, and drop-off before launch.

Surveys

Quantitative research at scale for market sizing, segmentation, concept scoring, and tracking studies. Designed with research rigour, not template defaults.

Concept and prototype testing Β· Card sorting Β· Tree testing

Evaluate ideas, information architectures, and early-stage designs before committing build resources.

Generative and evaluative. Qualitative and quantitative
Generative research discovers what customers need, what frustrates them, and what opportunities exist in your market before you've decided what to build. Evaluative research tests whether your solution works, validates assumptions before launch, and confirms product-market fit.
UXArmy designs studies across both dimensions and often combines them within a single programme of research. The method follows the business question. Not the other way around.

Not sure which research method fits your question?
Tell us the business problem you're trying to solve β€” whether that's understanding why customers are churning, validating a new product concept, or assessing a new market opportunity. Our team will design the right research approach and come back with a proposal.

Talk to our research team
Engagement models

One study or an ongoing partnership UXArmy fits both

Research needs vary. Some business questions can be answered with a single well-designed study. Others require a continuous research capability that keeps pace with your product and market decisions. UXArmy is structured to serve both.

One-off research project

A defined business question. A single study delivered end-to-end. You brief us on the problem we design the research, recruit the right participants, conduct fieldwork in the relevant markets and languages, synthesise the findings, and deliver a clear output your team can act on.

Typical process:
  • Brief and research question alignment
  • Study design and screener
  • Participant recruitment
  • Fieldwork in-person, remote, or both
  • Analysis and synthesis
  • Findings delivery in the format your team needs

Typical turnaround: 3–6 weeks depending on method, market, and audience complexity.

Ongoing research partnership

UXArmy embeds as your research function covering research planning, multiple studies across methods, continuous synthesis, and strategic input over months or years. For teams building continuously who need research to keep pace with their product and business decisions.

This model works particularly well for companies entering new APAC markets, running continuous improvement programmes, or building research capability for the first time.

What this covers:
  • Research roadmap and prioritisation
  • Multi-method, multi-market delivery
  • Continuous synthesis across studies
  • Stakeholder reporting and presentation support
  • Research operations recruitment, incentives, logistics
Example: UXArmy has been the embedded research partner for a leading Southeast Asian e-commerce platform for 6+ years covering research across six markets in four languages, at product speed.
CASE STUDIES

Research that changed what these businesses did next

Three engagements. Three industries. One consistent outcome: research that gave leadership teams the customer understanding they needed to move with confidence.

Technology Platform Β· eCommerce
Southeast Asia's leading eCommerce platform
300M+ monthly visitors Β· 7 markets Β· Multi-method research

The platform needed to maintain market leadership in one of the world's most competitive eCommerce markets. They required deep, multi-country customer insight to prioritise product improvements fast enough to act within a single sprint cycle.

What UXArmy did:

Designed and ran a simultaneous multi-method research programme across Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Taiwan in one week. Unmoderated usability testing captured how customers navigated the live app in their own language. Eye tracking identified exactly which interface elements customers saw, ignored, or missed. Online focus groups run in local languages surfaced category attitudes, competitor perceptions, and unmet expectations. UXArmy synthesised findings into prioritised pain points with product recommendations, delivered as highlight reels stakeholders could watch themselves, removing the need to read a 60-page report.

The business outcome
+29%
Total revenue growth year-on-year, following implementation of research-driven product improvements
7 markets
Researched in parallel in 5 days, including in-country language facilitation across each market
4
Quick-win fixes immediately implemented from 22 identified pain points, including a new feature with direct revenue upside
"Qualitative insights aligned with 60% of the issues flagged in quantitative satisfaction data. For the first time, the product team didn't just know what customers were doing. They understood why."
Financial Services Β· Retail Banking
One of Southeast Asia's three largest banks
Singapore-headquartered Β· 500 offices, 19 countries Β· 25,000+ employees

The bank had launched a digital banking app targeting millennials in Indonesia. The product worked in English but Indonesia's 270 million people overwhelmingly prefer Bahasa Indonesia. Menu labels that made sense to English speakers were confusing in translation. Customers couldn't find what they needed. App engagement was suffering.

What UXArmy did:

Ran a tree test in Bahasa Indonesia: 35 menu items, 8 real-life task scenarios, 200 qualified responses collected within four days from over 1,000 interested participants. UXArmy's Indonesian researchers did not just translate the tasks β€” they adapted the language to reflect how Indonesian banking customers actually speak, ensuring the test measured genuine comprehension, not translation competence. For example, "Akun" became "Rekening" β€” the term real Indonesians use at a bank counter, not in a dictionary. The findings gave the product team the confidence to restructure the menu architecture and go live.

The business outcome
+160%
Increase in app opens among Indonesian customers within three months of implementing the research findings
-83%
Drop in customer complaints about menu findability
2x
Daily active users, more than doubled within three months
"Localisation is not translation. The difference between the right word and the almost-right word was the difference between customers who could navigate the app and customers who couldn't. UXArmy found exactly where that line was."
Financial Services Β· Payments
Global payments network, APAC market research
Australia market Β· BNPL and instalment payment research Β· Mixed method

A global payments network needed to understand how Australian consumers would respond to a new flexible instalment product before committing to market rollout. The business question was specific: which payment flow do customers prefer, and what design decisions around signage, app interface, POS receipt, and in-app notifications drive uptake vs confusion at the point of purchase?

What UXArmy did:

Ran 16 in-depth interviews and 80 unmoderated usability tests in parallel, testing consumer response to multiple payment flows, design concepts, and real-world touchpoints including signage, receipts, and in-app communications. Unmoderated and moderated research ran simultaneously, compressing what would have been a 6-week sequential study into 3.5 weeks. Eight key usability findings shaped a redesigned payment flow, with specific decisions on whether instalment options should be cashier-initiated or customer-initiated at the point of sale.

The business outcome
3.5 weeks
Total research delivery, saving 3 weeks vs a sequential approach, giving the product team validated findings before the launch window closed
8 decisions
Key product and design decisions resolved, from payment flow preference to POS signage design, before market rollout
80 + 16
Unmoderated usability tests and in-depth interviews, run simultaneously to compress the research timeline without sacrificing sample depth
"The instalment product launched with a payment flow designed around what customers actually preferred, not what the team assumed. Research ran while the launch clock was still ticking."
Commonly Asked Questions

Everything you need to know

Here are answers to common questions you might have.

No. UXArmy conducts research across the full customer experience not just digital interfaces. This includes in-person contextual inquiry, home visits, mystery shopping, ethnographic observation, focus groups, and diary studies conducted in the real environments where customers live, shop, and work. While UXArmy also has strong capability in usability testing, prototype evaluation, and digital product research, the service is not limited to screens. Any business question about customer behaviour, perception, motivation, or experience can be addressed.

Yes this is the most common situation UXArmy is engaged in. Most companies commissioning outsourced research do not have a dedicated research function. UXArmy handles every aspect of the engagement: defining the research question with you, designing the study, recruiting the right participants, conducting fieldwork, synthesizing findings, and delivering outputs your leadership team can act on. You do not need research expertise to brief UXArmy. You need a clear business problem we handle the rest.

Tell us the business problem you are trying to solve not the research method you think you need. UXArmy starts from the business question and works backwards to the right methodology. If you are trying to understand why customers are churning, we will design the appropriate study. If you are validating a new product concept, we will recommend the right combination of generative and evaluative methods. Share your brief using the form below and our team will come back with a proposed approach.

Three differences are most significant. First, UXArmy is APAC-native research is conducted by in-market teams who speak the language, understand the cultural context, and have relationships in the markets where your customers live. Global agencies typically subcontract APAC fieldwork to local vendors, which introduces quality and briefing risk. Second, UXArmy uses its own technology platform to accelerate unmoderated testing, transcription, and analysis compressing timelines without replacing researcher judgement. Third, UXArmy scopes research to the business question, not to a pre-packaged methodology. Scope and approach adapt to what you need.

UXArmy conducts research independently across 20+ countries. Core markets include Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, India, Australia, Hong Kong, and Japan across Asia Pacific. UXArmy also operates across EMEA and the Americas. Research is conducted in more than 20 languages, including Mandarin, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Malaysia, Hindi, Tamil, Thai, Filipino, Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, and Portuguese, among others. For specific market availability, include the target geography in your brief.

A typical one-off research project follows this sequence:
(1) Brief alignmentΒ – UXArmy meets with your team to understand the business question, decision timeline, and constraints.
(2) Research designΒ – UXArmy proposes the methodology, sample, markets, and timeline.
(3) Participant recruitmentΒ – sourced from the UserAdvocate panel, partner panels, or through manual recruitment for niche profiles.
(4) FieldworkΒ – conducted in-person or remotely, in the relevant markets and languages.
(5) Analysis and synthesisΒ – findings are structured around your business question, not a generic report template.
(6) DeliveryΒ – in the format your team needs, whether that is a presentation, a written report, or a workshop session. Typical turnaround is 3–6 weeks, depending on complexity. [CONFIRM with ops team]

UXArmy quotes per project based on the research method, number of participants, target markets, languages, and scope of delivery. There is no standard price list because research scope varies significantly a two-market usability study and a six-country ethnographic research programme are fundamentally different engagements. The most efficient way to get a quote is to share your brief using the form below. UXArmy will come back within one business day with a proposed approach and cost estimate.

Have more questions?

If you have any other questions that are not covered here, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re here to provide the information you need and ensure your experience with us is smooth and enjoyable.

Get in touch

Tell us the business problem you're trying to solve

You don’t need a research brief. You don’t need to know which method you need. Just tell us what decision you’re trying to make, what question your leadership team keeps coming back to, or what customer behavior you can’t explain. Our research team will come back within one business day with a proposed approach.

The companies that understand their customers best win

In a competitive market, customer understanding is not a nice-to-have. It is the strategic advantage that separates brands that grow from brands that guess. UXArmy has been helping businesses across Asia Pacific build that advantage for over a decade.

πŸ‘‹ How can we help you
with your User Research?

Chat with an expert

Fill in some details to start the conversation

Preferences saved. You can update these anytime from the footer.