Meet
Cat Maxwell Smith
Cat Maxwell Smith is the founder and Chief Research Strategist of Seedling Insights, based in Plano, Texas. She has over 20 years of experience in qualitative and quantitative market research, partnering with clients locally, nationally, and internationally. She holds a Master of Science in Marketing Research from the University of Texas at Arlington and a BBA in Management.
For over two decades, Cat has helped organizations move from complexity to clarity to action, translating what people think, feel, and do into insight that leadership teams can actually use. She has worked inside highly matrixed Fortune 500 companies and 100-plus-year-old institutions, alongside founders building something from scratch. The throughline has never changed: ask the right question, listen closely, and turn what is learned into a decision someone can act on.
Industries
Technology and SaaS
Financial Services, Banking, and Payments
Retail and eCommerce
Healthcare
Food, Beverage, and CPG
Industrial Machinery and Manufacturing
Research design and moderation: focus groups, in-depth interviews, ethnographies, discussion boards, and co-creation sessions
Strategy and competitive insight: corporate strategy, brand development, pricing research and strategy, competitive intelligence, retail strategy, SWOT analysis, employee engagement research
Customer and market understanding: customer journey and experience (CX), voice of customer (VOC) and customer satisfaction, customer segmentation, customer retention analysis, customer analytics, key driver analysis, industry trend analysis
Concept and product development: concept development and testing, product development and strategy, packaging research and innovation, sensory and taste/flavor optimization, white space and innovation research, loyalty and rewards research, UX and digital experience research
Utilities and Energy
Telecommunications
Automotive
Media and Entertainment
Higher Education
Non-profit and Government
Methodology
Advanced quantitative and statistical analysis: survey design, conjoint analysis, discrete choice analysis, TURF analysis, regression, factor analysis, multidimensional scaling (MDS), choice modeling, ROI analysis
Reporting, activation, and tools: VOC dashboard design, KPI frameworks, mixed-method strategy connecting qualitative depth to quantitative validation, statistical and visualization tools including SPSS, Tableau, Power BI, and Qualtrics
Cat also applies NLP and Milton Model training to discussion guide design and facilitation, surfacing what surface-level answers miss.
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