How a Leading Speciality Retailer Partners With Morning Consult to Stay Ahead of Rural Market Shifts
“Morning Consult has the largest amount of data, and they’re able to break it down by locations or income cohorts that are relevant to us. We’ve evaluated other vendors in the past, and Morning Consult gives us the best results.”
Chief Financial Officer
Leading Specialty Retailer
About the Company
This leading rural lifestyle retailer serves recreational farmers, ranchers, pet owners, and landowners. Its stores are concentrated in rural and exurban markets with no locations in urban America, reaching customers whose spending priorities often differ from national trends.
Why Morning Consult?
The retailer needed detailed consumer sentiment and demand data that allowed them to drill down to their customer base across rural and exurban America. Traditional government measures provide only a high-level view and are updated just once a month, but the retailer required a partner that could deliver daily insights tailored to their audience and moving at the speed of their business.
Today, the retailer leverages consumer sentiment data from Morning Consult Intelligence, an always-on, comprehensive platform that combines brand tracking, category and audience sentiment, and high-frequency economic data—giving them a real-time read on its core markets.
With Morning Consult Intelligence, the retailer can:
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Access a centralized, self-serve platform of consumer insights pulled from thousands of daily surveys
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Build custom, consumer demand-focused dashboards and data visualizations for specific audience segments and markets, with granularity down to ZIP code and income level
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Anticipate customer spending by tracking high-frequency signals on job security, household finances, investment outlook, and inflation concerns
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Partner with Morning Consult’s economic experts to help translate consumer sentiment shifts into operational decisions
“Other data sets don’t reflect how rural Americans are feeling. Getting sentiment specific to our markets, in real time, lets us adjust quickly as customer confidence shifts.”
Chief Financial Officer
Leading Specialty Retailer
What This Looks Like in Practice
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Morning Consult Intelligence Dashboard Snapshot: Sentiment among rural consumers and within the company footprint (store ZIP codes) often trends below the national average — offering early signals and nuances that broader indicators miss.
Seeing Rural Economic Sentiment Rise Before the Market Did
Many rural consumers own a home and land, with incomes at or above the national average. For higher-income segments, confidence and willingness to spend on discretionary items are closely tied to the health of their investments and inflation pressures. While national indexes recently showed only modest movement, Morning Consult’s rural- and exurban-specific data revealed a clear lift in confidence. This gave leadership an early read on demand and the confidence to align pricing, promotions, and inventory to match their customers’ optimism.
Spotting Tariff Concerns Before They Hit
The retailer had not yet seen tariffs meaningfully affect their business, but sentiment data showed concern beginning to build again in July and August 2025 after easing earlier in the year. That early read gave leadership visibility into how customer attitudes were shifting, even before it showed up in sales trends.
“Retailers are going to need to be very nimble this quarter, which is why it’s critical for us to have real-time data on consumer sentiment as we make decisions on how much price we can pass on.”
Chief Financial Officer
Leading Specialty Retailer
The Results
As a result, the retailer is able to:
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Move on pricing, promotions, and inventory weeks earlier by tracking rural and exurban confidence in jobs, finances, and investments
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Allocate inventory efficiently by spotting where and how fast discretionary spending shifts in core markets
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Identify when their markets are outperforming or lagging national trends, guiding when to lean in or pull back
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React quickly to inflation or tariff pressures by knowing exactly when customers’ willingness to spend changes
