Most research starts with a screener question and hopes the answer is true. Ario Verified Audience starts one step earlier — with people who have already connected the accounts where they shop, so a study can be sent to the people whose purchase history shows they belong in it.
This page walks the whole path, using a real study we ran as the worked example: Dog Oral Care Habits — 58 questions answered by 25 verified dog-care buyers, every answer read against what that shopper actually bought.
The panel is built before any study exists. Someone invited to Ario's Verified Buyer Panel is asked to do one thing: connect one or more of the retail accounts they already use. Connections are read-only — Ario reads order history and never sees the panelist's password.
Each connection widens what that person can qualify for later, so the panelist-facing incentive is honest and simple: the more accounts you connect, the more studies you'll be invited to.
Many of our customers want to hear from real Verified Buyers. Connect one or more of your retail accounts below to become eligible for upcoming studies — the more you connect, the more likely you'll be contacted.
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You're eligible for upcoming Verified Buyer studies. Connect more accounts to get contacted more often.
A connected account returns order lines, not insight. Ario parses each line into its parts — product, brand, date, price, quantity, channel — and then classifies it into a category label. That label is the thing targeting runs on.
In the pet category the labels separate a dental chew from a toothbrush from a supplement, because "bought pet oral care" and "brushes the dog's teeth" are different behaviors and a study usually needs one and not the other.
A brief like "I want to talk to dog owners who buy dental chews" is enough. Ario turns that into a purchase definition, checks how many panelists actually satisfy it, and proposes a composition.
The default split is a minority of buyers of the client's own brand and a majority from the broader category, so the study can hear from loyalists and from everyone else in the same conversation. Feasibility is a hard ceiling: if the Verified Buyers aren't there, the number comes back lower rather than being padded with claimed buyers.
This is the step that changes the data. A traditional panel asks "have you bought a dental chew in the last year?" and takes the answer. Ario doesn't ask — the eligible list is drawn from purchase records, then invited.
When a study needs a single specific product confirmed rather than a category, the same check can run at the door: the respondent connects an account, Ario matches that one purchase, and only "this product was purchased" is passed on — no prices, no other orders.
The dog oral care study ran 58 questions. How they get asked is the client's call. Structured survey questions give clean, countable answers across the whole sample. An AI-moderated interview lets the respondent talk and asks a live follow-up when an answer is thin or interesting — which is where the quotable material comes from: "He doesn't like it at all," "Hold her down, keep her still."
Both can run inside one study: structured questions where you need to count, moderated follow-ups where you need to understand.
The survey and the purchase history belong to the same person, so they can be placed side by side: this shopper said X and this shopper bought Y.
In the dog oral care study it landed on flavor. Asked what flavors they prefer in oral-care products, respondents put peanut butter and mint on top. Their purchased chew, treat and dental lines were led by beef, by a wide margin — 198 appearances across the 1,217 chew, treat and dental lines those 25 shoppers bought.
The deliverable isn't a topline with the raw data locked away. Findings, the individual respondents, their verified labels and their full purchase history all ship together, so any claim can be walked back to the shopper it came from.
That means a finding is checkable. A reader who doubts that chews beat brushing can open the respondent list, read the person's own words, and see the dental chews in their orders — Dog Oral Care Habits, in full.
Panelists consent to share shopping history for research, not identity. A study is delivered against pseudonymous shopper IDs — S01 through S25 in the dog oral care example — and that is the only handle a client ever gets on a respondent.
Bring the category and the behavior you want to understand. We'll come back with how many Verified Buyers satisfy it, and what the study would look like.