See more before your next big decision.
Outdoor businesses make important decisions every day: what to build, what to improve, and where to invest.
Sales data, customer reviews, and everyday conversations provide valuable clues. But they don't always reveal why customers make the choices they do, where experiences fall short, or which opportunities deserve the most attention.
I bring professional customer and product research to those decisions, helping outdoor businesses understand what matters, reduce uncertainty, and build a competitive edge.
The key is shifting from reacting to challenges to anticipating them.
We stand a better chance of reaching our goals when we scout the path ahead.
The data points become the waypoints
Questions worth asking.
Purchase decisions
What attracts customers, creates hesitation, or influences their decisions?
Investment priorities
What do customers actually need, and which opportunities are worth pursuing first?
Customer roadblocks
What makes finding information, buying, getting started, or using your products and services harder than it should be?
After the sale
What do customers value, struggle with, or wish worked better over time?
The obvious fix isn't always the best one.
Imagine a company selling solar camp lights. Returns are increasing, and customer reviews repeatedly mention that the lights don't last through the evening.
Increasing battery capacity seems like a sensible response.
But what if the issue involves unreliable charging, real-world conditions that limit solar performance, or expectations about runtime that don't match actual use?
And when a light fails at camp, what does that experience do to customers' confidence and trust?
These possibilities could point toward very different responses.
Before investing in a solution, understand what you're actually trying to solve.
Research helps investigate likely causes, understand their impact on customers, and determine where to focus the next investment.
Put research to work.
Focused Research
Explore opportunities. Evaluate ideas. Make better decisions.
Investigate new product opportunities, evaluate concepts, test products in real-world conditions, or improve an existing customer experience.
I design and conduct the research, interpret the findings, and recommend practical next steps tied to the decision at hand.
Ongoing Customer Understanding
Customer understanding that grows with your business.
The Customer Understanding Engine (CUE) connects research at key moments in the customer journey, from purchase decisions through early ownership and long-term use.
Each cycle adds to a growing body of comparable evidence. I build and manage the system, bringing findings together over time to identify patterns, emerging concerns, and opportunities worth investigating.
Start small. Make it useful. Build from there.
Research expertise. Hands-on delivery.
I'm Dan Shapera. For more than 15 years, I've helped businesses understand human behavior, investigate complex questions, and inform product and business decisions.
Today, I bring that experience to outdoor businesses through Scouted Path.
I personally lead each engagement, from research design and fieldwork through analysis and interpretation.
No large agency structure or unnecessary handoffs. Just thoughtful, professional research built around your business.
What's next for your business?
Developing something new? Considering an improvement? Facing a decision you'd like to understand better?
I'd love to hear what you're working on and explore where research might help.