Many new business ideas don’t break even. What holds many companies back is an inability to take the customer-permissioned data that they have and converting it into meaningful insights.

For many top companies, they’re turning to business experimentation to address this issue head-on. Business experimentation is the process that allows them to filter out any excess noise and make decisions that are well-informed, and data driven.

Mastercard conducted a survey in 2024 to understand current trends in business experimentation in the retail and restaurant industries. This annual survey was completed by over 100 Mastercard Test & Learn® clients. In this report, you can:

• Learn about emerging business trends
• View trends dissected by business function
• Understand testing practices
• See how testing can create business value
• Learn what other leading companies are testing and how they’re testing

Broken out by industry, the results show insightful trends:

• Not all decisions can be made with your gut alone. Nearly half — 46% in the retail industry and 42% in the restaurant industry — of business ideas do not break even or result in proving an initial hypothesis.
• 59% of retailers are investing in space allocation
• 86% of restaurants are investing in new product or category marketing

To learn more about the current trends in business experimentation and see how you stack up, download the report.