The Best Answer We Ever Got Was to a Question We Never Asked

Americans spent this summer cutting back. Not necessarily canceling, but adapting their plans to save money. Vacations still happened, but they were shorter and closer to home, and families moved down a star or two on accommodations. Gallup polled a thousand adults in June and found:

• 67% saying the price of gas is causing their household real hardship,
• 57% driving less than they otherwise would,
• and 46% changing their summer vacation plans outright.

A separate survey in May asked only travelers — the people who had trips planned in the first place — and among them the share changing plans over gas prices jumps to two-thirds, though only 6% reported canceling a planned trip entirely. Same summer, different question, different number: Gallup’s 46% counts everyone, including the folks who were always staying home.

Among households earning under $50,000 a year, 77% report hardship from gas prices; above $100,000, it’s 59%. Bank of America’s economists called summer travel plans “K-shaped,” meaning the people with the least room to cut are doing the most cutting.

That’s the consumer side, but I’d like to segue to business, where I see a similar pattern.

Speaking of cuts

As agencies and brands are gearing up for a busy Q4, I’ve noticed that while quant is on everyone’s radar, qualitative research is being cut from the budget. It’s the easiest cut to rationalize, as qual takes a good amount of time and costs more than quant. Given that we are in a fast-moving technological age, I suspect AI is being used as a cost-effective replacement for qual.

We use AI at Evolve every single day, and it’s incredibly useful — especially for getting more out of the data we already have. If your question is “what does the existing evidence say,” AI will answer it faster than any human.

AI is an extraordinary machine for rearranging what’s already known: what’s been written down, surveyed, posted, and scraped. What it cannot do is surprise you with something nobody has said yet. AI is trained on existing data, and you and your competitors are probably using the same tools to get insights — which means any unique data advantage flies out the window. It’s that unique data that is the key connection with your audience.

The question we never asked

A little while back, we ran a three-day digital community with members of the LGBTQ community, on a topic most people would rather not discuss in a group or with a stranger.

Our discussion guide contained carefully written strategic questions that were targeted to answer our client’s specific objectives. During the session, a respondent mentioned, in passing, the feeling of being ashamed and judged when seeking help. They weren’t answering anything we’d asked, but the moment it landed in the group, everyone had similar stories to share. Person after person, unprompted, described the same debilitating feeling and how it kept them from getting the care they needed. The thread took on a life of its own.

This random conversation turned out to be the game-changer of the whole project, and there is no version of events in which a survey, a dashboard, a quant study, or a trained LLM would have uncovered this information. It was new and game-changing knowledge.

This is what qual is for, and why it is such an unsung hero of research. Quant tells you how much of what you already suspected is true. Qual is exploratory by design, and its whole job is to find the gaps, the unknowns, the thing your audience is feeling that isn’t documented anywhere. When money is tight, knowing what everyone else knows is worth less than ever.

Cutting back is sensible. Everyone’s doing it — you’ve seen the charts. Just be deliberate about which line you cut, because one of them is the only one that can tell you something you didn’t already know.

We’ve spent years getting people to open up about the things they don’t usually say out loud — it’s rather our specialty. If your Q4 plan is built entirely on what you already know, let’s talk before you get too deep into busy season.

Sources

• Gas Prices Hitting Americans’ Finances, Travel Plans — Gallup (June 2026, n=1,001). 67% hardship; 57% driving less; 46% altered vacation plans; income splits 77%/65%/59%.
• Summer Travel Survey: Two-Thirds of Americans Say Rising Gas Prices Have Impacted Their Plans — Only In Your State (May 2026, n=1,000). 66% changed plans; 27% major changes; 6% canceled entirely.
• Summer Travel 2026: Resilient, but uneven — Bank of America Institute (May 2026). K-shaped travel spending; lower-income travel card spending down YoY; nearly 40% of lower-income households with no travel plans.