Consumer insight for the global experience economy
GXE Consumer is an independent research and insight company. We track, measure and analyse how consumers think, feel and spend across the global experience economy — giving operators, brands and investors the understanding they need to make better decisions.
Our vision
To be the world's most trusted source of consumer insight in the experience economy. We give operators, brands and investors the understanding they need to build experiences that people love — and that build lasting commercial value.
What we offer
Quarterly tracking across 13 experience sectors and 7 markets. A consistent, benchmarked read on how consumers feel, behave and spend.
Annual deep dives into a single experience sector. Larger sample, greater depth. Currently covering live football across the UK, US and Germany.
A framework for measuring how live experiences and sponsorship activations move brand equity — before, during and after the event.
Bespoke consumer research and strategic advisory. Built around the question your business actually needs answered.
Who we work with
Theme parks, festivals, pub groups, hotels, spas, play centres. The experience is your brand — we help you understand it, benchmark it and improve it.
Spirits, luxury goods, FMCG. The experience is your medium. We tell you whether it's building or eroding your equity — and why.
Building or investing in a new experience? Consumer evidence, not instinct. We tell you what people want and where the market is moving.
Independent, credible data to underpin client strategies. Proprietary GXE data published quarterly, designed to underpin client work and press activity.
GXE Consumer is an independent consumer insight company focused exclusively on the global experience economy. We started it because the research industry wasn't keeping up with the way consumers had fundamentally shifted their spending — and the people building and investing in experiences deserved better data.
Our vision
To be the world's most trusted source of consumer insight in the experience economy. We give operators, brands and investors the understanding they need to build experiences that people love — and that build lasting commercial value.
How we work
When there's tension between what a client wants to hear and what consumers actually think, we publish what consumers think.
Consumers rarely tell the whole truth. We use projective techniques, semiotics and behavioural science to close the gap between what people say and what they do.
The industry has plenty of data about what happened. We focus on what consumers want next — and where appetite is shifting before it becomes obvious.
Consumers don't live sector by sector. Neither does our insight. We span sectors, connect data sources, and see the full shape of the experience economy.
Data without interpretation is noise. Interpretation without recommendation is academic. If our work doesn't change something, we haven't done our job.
The experience economy deserves research that is methodologically serious. Our standards don't bend to commercial pressure or a desire for a cleaner headline.
The team
Amy has spent 13 years working in consumer research, CX strategy and brand development exclusively within the leisure, hospitality and experience sector. Before GXE, she led consumer insight at Brand Vista, working with some of the most recognised names in the industry — LEGO, Greene King, Merlin Entertainments and David Lloyd among them.
Her work has ranged from quantitative trackers and brand health studies to qualitative deep dives and behavioural science-informed research. She understands how experience consumers think, what they trade off, and what it takes to turn that understanding into meaningful strategy.
Phil is the founder and CEO of GXE, the Global Experience Economy intelligence platform. GXE Consumer sits within GXE's broader mission to build the world's most comprehensive intelligence layer for the experience economy — from consumer insight to brand equity measurement and market analytics.
Phil brings commercial and strategic leadership to GXE Consumer, shaping the product roadmap and driving the commercial relationships that will define the business over the coming years.
Syndicated research · Quarterly
The global consumer tracking study for the experience economy. 13 sectors. 7 markets. Four times a year. A consistent, benchmarked read on how consumers feel, behave and spend — across the full picture.
What it is
Most research in the experience economy sits in sector silos — sport here, music there, hospitality somewhere else. Consumer Pulse sees the whole picture. How consumers allocate their leisure time and spending across sectors, what's growing, what's declining, and where wallet share is shifting.
Live music, spectator sport, festivals, theatre, cinema, attractions, immersive experiences, competitive socialising, active sport, experiential F&B, experiential retail, travel and wellness.
UK, US, Australia, Germany, Japan, Brazil and UAE. Selected to give regional coverage across the key experience economy markets, with consistent methodology across every market.
Weighted for age, gender and region. Consistent methodology every quarter to enable reliable trend tracking and market comparison.
Core survey data layered with spend data, social listening and review analysis — giving a richer, more complete picture of consumer behaviour than survey data alone.
What it measures
Who is attending, how often, and how this changes over time and across markets.
What consumers spend across sectors, how they allocate leisure budgets, and where wallet share is shifting.
How consumers feel about each sector and their stated intentions for the next quarter.
What consumers value most and where current experiences fall short of expectation.
How consumers trade off competing sectors — which experiences win when budgets are squeezed.
What stops consumers attending more — cost, access, time, awareness, or something else entirely.
Add your own questions
Clients can purchase bespoke questions appended to the questionnaire. Only you have access to your data — giving you proprietary insight within a syndicated study.
Sector deep dives · Annual
Annual deep dives into a single experience sector. Where Consumer Pulse gives you the read across the economy, GXE Focus goes inside one category at a time — with a larger sample, richer methodology, and far greater depth.
Current study · 2026
Football stadiums host hundreds of millions of people every year. The matchday is one of the most emotionally charged consumer experiences in existence. And yet the industry's understanding of what fans actually want — beyond the result — remains surprisingly thin.
Planning and booking, travel, pre-match, the match itself, F&B, atmosphere, post-match — and everything that shapes whether fans come back.
UK, US and Germany. Three distinct football cultures, one consistent methodology — enabling cross-market comparison and identifying what's universal versus local.
Large-scale survey data combined with in-depth interviews — giving both the scale to be confident and the depth to understand what's really driving behaviour.
A dedicated module covering viewing intentions, travel intent, and fan park attitudes across all three markets.
Topics covered
Frequency, travel distance, ticket type, league differences
Avid vs casual vs social, emotional and identity drivers
What makes people attend, what stops them, cost and alternatives
Pre-event, arrival, during the match, post-event dwell
Tickets, F&B, merch, travel, planned vs impulse
What fans want, mobile ordering, quality, price tolerance
What creates it, what ruins it, crowd energy
Comfort, navigation, facilities, accessibility, social spaces
Immersive tech, premium tiers, mixed-use precincts
What makes them great, location, willingness to pay
Recall, activation impact, what works vs feels forced
Viewing intentions, travel intent, fan park awareness
Custom add-ons
Clients can purchase bespoke questions appended to the questionnaire. Only you have access to your data — giving you proprietary insight within a syndicated study. Example topics include brand perceptions among fans, drinking behaviour, sponsorship impact and attitudes to low and no-alcohol options.
Sponsorship measurement
A framework for understanding how live experiences and sponsorship activations move brand equity. Pre, during and post — with a composite Brand Equity Score that tells you what shifted, by how much, and why.
The problem we solve
Experiences create deeper, more durable brand associations than advertising alone. But most brands investing in sponsorship and activation have no robust way to measure what actually changed in people's minds. We built this framework to close that gap.
Experiences create deeper, more durable brand associations than advertising alone.
Brand presence that feels intrusive actively undermines equity, not just visibility. We measure this.
The right experience aligns with your audience's identity and values — not just their demographics.
From atmosphere to activation, experience shapes how your brand is felt, recalled and talked about.
The five pillars
Spontaneous awareness — the brand's place in the consumer's mental repertoire.
How unique or distinct a brand feels from its competitors.
Whether consumers connect the right values and perceptions to the brand.
"A brand for people like me" — the most powerful predictor of long-term loyalty.
Likelihood to consider, purchase and recommend — the commercial output of brand equity.
How it works
We measure brand equity at three points around an event or activation — establishing a baseline before, capturing in-the-moment impact during, and quantifying what actually shifted after. The result is a clear, defensible picture of what your investment did to your brand.
Baseline brand equity established before the event. Where does the brand sit in consumers' minds before activation?
In-the-moment brand impact captured at the event. What is the activation doing, and how is it landing?
Comparative measurement after the event. What shifted, by how much, and what drove the change?
Bespoke research · Strategic advisory
We plug in where consumer insight matters most. Whether you're entering a new market, developing a brand, testing a concept or trying to understand why your experience isn't landing — we build the research around the question you actually need answered.
How we work
We're not a replacement for your strategy or design expertise. We're the consumer and market research layer that makes your decisions land — designed from the start to fuel strategy, not to generate generic market data.
Who are your audiences, what do they want, and where does the competitive opportunity sit? Desk research, focus groups, depth interviews, social listening and market mapping.
Consumer insight used to identify, shape and stress-test brand territories before you build strategy on top of them. Stimulus-led qual, projective techniques and survey validation.
Propositions, experience concepts and F&B ideas pressure-tested with consumers. Know what will fly before you commit. Accompanied walkthroughs, on-site research and quick quant.
Did it work? Brand tracking, NPS, CX surveys and customer segmentation to close the loop on your strategy.
Why GXE Consumer
Every piece of research we design is built from the ground up to answer experience economy questions. The methods, the stimuli, the questions — shaped around how experience consumers actually think and behave.
Research that identified a flagship London site was wrong before signing — saving a multi-million pound lease commitment. Concept testing that revealed a premium F&B proposition was wrong for the venue occasion before launch. Brand research that redirected a mid-market positioning strategy before it went to market.
Whether you're interested in Consumer Pulse subscriptions, a custom question add-on, the Live Football deep dive, a brand equity measurement programme, or a bespoke research brief — we'd love to hear from you.
Get in touch
We'll get back to you quickly — and if you're not sure exactly what you need, that's fine too. A conversation is a good place to start.
GXE Consumer · Published Research
Our reports give operators, brands, investors and agencies the consumer data they need to make better decisions. Quarterly trackers, sector deep dives and focused studies - all independently produced.
Syndicated tracker
Quarterly consumer tracking across 13 experience sectors and 7 global markets. Each quarter delivers a benchmarked, trend-tracked read on participation, spend, sentiment and intent.
The first wave of our quarterly tracker. Cross-sector participation rates, spend behaviour, sentiment and intent across 13 experience sectors in 7 markets.
The second quarterly wave. Trend data vs Wave 1, sector shifts and emerging demand signals across the full experience economy.
Sector deep dives
Annual deep dives into a single experience sector. Larger sample, qualitative depth, and the full picture - from fan types and spend behaviour to sponsorship impact and venue innovation.
The definitive study of the live football fan experience. Attendance behaviour, the matchday journey, F&B, atmosphere, sponsorship and the World Cup 2026.
The second annual sector deep dive. Sector to be confirmed. Register your interest to be notified when the Wave 2 focus sector is announced.
GXE Demand
We can append questions exclusively to your brief across both Consumer Pulse and GXE Focus. Only you see the data.