About
A research firm, not a data vendor.
Our story
GCR was founded in Colombia in 2008 to do something that sounds obvious and turns out to be rare: help companies decide, rather than sell them data.
Eighteen years later, that is still the whole business. We have run thousands of interviews in homes across Colombia, moderated groups on everything from smartphone design to feminine protection, tracked biodiversity attitudes in Ecuador, and interviewed dermatologists about atopic dermatitis. We have worked for global names through partner agencies and directly for local companies making their first-ever research investment.
What has not changed is the shape of the work: understand the decision, design the right study, run it properly, and translate what comes back into something a person can act on.
The founder
Ricardo Guerrero
Founder & Managing Director
Generative Competitive Research
Market Research & AI Consultancy
Ricardo Guerrero is GCR's founder and Managing Director. He designs and runs market research across Latin America and North America — qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods. His specialism is regional nuance: reading what a result actually means in a particular market, and building that into brand positioning, product decisions and go-to-market plans. He also advises organisations on their own research functions, including where AI genuinely helps and where it quietly costs accuracy. An ESOMAR member, and an economist with an MSc in Management from the London School of Economics.
LinkedIn (Ricardo Guerrero's profile, opens in a new tab)
Methodology
How we work, methodologically
Every project runs through the same five stages — Diagnose, Design, Field, Decode, Decide — regardless of whether the work is qualitative, quantitative or mixed. The stage that most firms skip is the first one.
Method follows the decision
We choose the instrument after we understand what is being decided, not before. That is what makes right-sizing possible.
Fieldwork is run, not subcontracted
We run the fieldwork ourselves, in-market and in-language, with real quality control on the data that comes back.
Mixed methods where the question needs them
Exploratory work to understand why, measurement to establish how much. Most real decisions need some of each.
Findings are translated, not delivered
The deliverable is the decision and its evidence — not a data dump for someone else to interpret.
Why the name
Our name is our method
Generative — the exploratory work that discovers what customers actually need. Competitive — the measurement that tells you where you really stand. Research — the method, rigor and evidence under both.
A note on “Generative”: in research, generative means exploratory — the discovery work that generates understanding of what people actually need, before anything gets measured. It is a decades-old methodological tradition, and it has nothing to do with generative AI. We use AI to accelerate the work. The method came first, and the thinking is still human.
- Generative
- Discover what your customers actually need.
- Competitive
- Understand your market with confident insights and data.
- Research
- The foundation under both: method, rigor, and evidence.
Standards & ethics
ESOMAR standards, respondent care, data responsibility
Ricardo Guerrero is an individual member of ESOMAR, the global insights community, and GCR works to the ESOMAR Code — on research quality, on how participants are treated, and on what happens to data.
This matters most where it is least visible. Participants are told what a study is for and what happens to their answers. Client materials stay confidential. And when AI is used in a dataset, an analysis or a report, we say so and say how much human oversight sits over it.
Research quality
Sound instruments, real samples, and analysis that survives scrutiny from someone who wants to disagree with it.
Respondent care
Informed participation, no deceptive screening, and no reuse of personal data beyond what was consented to.
Data responsibility
Client materials stay in a secure, controlled environment and are never used to train public AI models.
Geography
Based in Colombia, with global reach
We are based in Colombia and run fieldwork there directly — more than 15 cities, from the main metros to the intermediate cities most studies never reach.
Across the rest of LATAM and in North America we work through a network of local partners we have used for years, so the fieldwork is run by people who live the market and speak its language. Where a project is digital, our reach is worldwide.
Colombia — fieldwork run directly
- Peru
- Brazil
- Mexico
- Ecuador
- Chile
- Argentina
- United States
- Canada
Know before you commit.
Tell us the decision you're weighing. We'll tell you what it would take to answer it — and whether we're the right team to do it.
