Pro Trade & Business Profile
Customer & Work Type Mix
Retailer Usage by Pro Group
In-Store vs. Online Behavior
Brand Importance
Quarter-Over-Quarter Tracking
WHY PRO INSIGHTS
The Pro buyer, revealed
Pro Profile + Purchase Practice + Preferences = Your Highest-Value Pro
trade × work type × retailer × channel × brand importance × demographics
Home improvement brands and retailers manage trade marketing, channel strategy, and category decisions without ever seeing the one thing that drives all three: who the Pro buyer actually is.
OpenBrand’s proprietary Pro Insights puts that Pro buyer in view. Self-reported data on who the Pros are, what drives their purchase decisions, and the customers they serve gives you a deeper understanding of the Pro market while identifying which segments can drive growth.
That understanding compounds. Because the same question set is fielded every quarter, a segment you size today is a segment you can still recognize four quarters from now, which turns a one-time read into a working view of how the Pro market is moving.
The Gap
Do you know which Pros matter most to your growth?
Sales data shows what was bought. It doesn’t show how the Pro market breaks down, or which segments drive growth.
Which trade is actually buying
General contractors, remodelers, and specialty trades get lumped together, so you can’t tell which Pro matters most. A category can look healthy in aggregate while the segment actually buying it goes unnamed, and unserved.
Who that Pro is working for
Nothing tells you whether a Pro is working for a homeowner, a builder, or a commercial client. Two Pros in the same trade, buying the same category, can be running completely different businesses.
What kind of business they run
Business size, purchase authority, region, and trade focus all shape how a Pro buys, and none of it shows up in a transaction record. Without that profile, targeting stays a guess.
Pro Insights closes that gap with one data set built to answer all three.
What We Deliver
Build a sharper Pro strategy with OpenBrand
Every day, our proprietary panel of self-reported Pros answer the same fixed set of questions centered around their trade, work type, retailer, channel, brand importance, and demographics. That consistency is what makes the results comparable. Here are some of the insights you can gather with OpenBrand.
See the Pro buyer more clearly
Group Pros by trade, business size, customer type, job, and category.
- Primary trade
- Business size by employee count, from solo operators to 20+ firms
- Purchasing role, separating decision-makers from influencers
- Customer and work type across homeowner, commercial, property manager, and builder work
Compare & track Pro buyer segments
Compare Pros by customer type, and follow segment shifts across quarters.
- Compare a target Pro group against all Pros
- Isolate the buyers of a single category
- Watch trade mix, customer mix, channel behavior, and brand relevance shift over time
Add context, not just a transaction
Layer this proprietary directional insight into your current transactional data.
- Categories purchased for pro jobs
- Outlets Pros report making purchases
- In-store, online, and mixed purchase behavior by segment
- Stated brand importance, including where brand matters for some products and not others
Pro status and all responses are self-reported. Results are a directional read on the Pro market, not market share measurement.
Demo Your New Pro Insights
Discover a unique data set built to sharpen your Pro commercial strategy
Durables brands and retailers are using OpenBrand’s proprietary Pro Insights as a competitive edge, adding a view of the Pro buyer that nothing else in their stack was built to provide.
Let’s find your highest-value Pro and build a strategy to win.
6
CATEGORY GROUPS
Core home improvement categories fielded today
30k+
RESPONSES ANNUALLY
From self-reported pro workers, fielded quarterly
1
FIXED QUESTION SET
Every Pro answers the same questions
Category Coverage Across Six Core Home Improvement Areas
General home appliances
Construction tools & equipment
Fixtures & installed products
Home consumer electronics
Landscape equipment & supplies
Materials & consumables
How Pro Insights Helps
What this means for your commercial strategy
Inside those categories, Pro Insights adds layers of insight that are impossible to get at scale.
Segment Prioritization
Know where to focus
- Prioritize the Pro segment most relevant to a category, instead of spreading effort evenly across all of them
- Show which trade groups make up the largest share of buyers in a category
- Focus field support, trade programs, and local activation on the segments with the most upside
Customer & Work Type Mix
Understand who Pros actually build for
- See the split between homeowner, builder, and commercial work, context sales data alone can’t show
- Break out new construction, remodel, repair, and mixed-work Pros
- Compare how preferences differ between Pros serving commercial clients and Pros serving homeowners
Brand Importance by Segment
Optimize where brand actually matters
- Know when brand drives the purchase decision, instead of assuming it always does
- Compare stated brand importance across trades, business sizes, and work types
- Identify categories where brand is important for some products and not others
Quarter-Over-Quarter Tracking
Act according to how a segment moves over time
- Track a defined Pro group across fielding quarters, not just a single snapshot
- Follow how trade mix, customer mix, channel behavior, and brand relevance shift
- See retailer usage and in-store versus online behavior change by segment
Who It's For
Built for both sides of the Pro aisle
For Retailers
Pro desks and trade counters serve very different Pros, and treating them as one audience leaves growth on the table. Pro Insights shows which trade groups make up the largest share of buyers in a category, what work those Pros are doing, and how they split between in-store and online purchasing.
For Brands
Trade and channel marketing works best aimed at a defined segment instead of the entire professional market. Pro Insights isolates the buyers of your category within the broader Pro population and compares them against all Pros on trade, business size, decision authority, and brand relevance.
Frequently Asked Questions
Pro Insights is self-reported Pro survey data for home improvement brands and retailers. A fixed question set is fielded to builders, contractors, and professional buyers who confirm they are involved in product and material purchase decisions. The result is a view of who Pro buyers are, who they serve, where they buy, and what drives their choices.
Periodic studies are built for a single question at a single moment, and they rarely stay comparable when the next wave comes. Pro Insights fields the same question set every period, so the same segments can be grouped and tracked. That comparability is the product, not just the individual read.
Pro Insights is a directional read on Pro buyers and the customers they serve, not market measurement. It is sold independently of OpenBrand’s MindShare solution, contains no consumer purchase data, and covers the US market today.
Trusted by global brands, retailers, distributors, and suppliers
EXPLORE OUR DATA
Public Quarterly Market Dashboards
OpenBrand’s data is available to the public through MarketSignal, our quarterly overview dashboards, delivering market share, pricing, promotions, and purchase insights.
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