Case Study
Building a market strategy for Cox2M’s smart traffic technology
Cox Communications’ innovation lab, Cox2M, partnered with Bixa to develop a market strategy for its connected traffic technology. The IoT solution was designed to help cities improve traffic flow and safety while creating new opportunities to generate value from traffic data.
Bixa combined interviews with municipal traffic engineers and a detailed smart-traffic landscape analysis. The research clarified how cities evaluate new technology, identified the people involved in purchasing decisions, and explored potential data applications across auto insurance, ridesharing, and the automotive industry.
The findings gave Cox2M a more focused sales strategy, clearer product positioning, and a roadmap for entering the smart traffic infrastructure market.
The challenge
Cox2M needed to understand how its connected traffic solution could address the practical needs of cities and succeed in a complex municipal buying environment. The research focused on four key questions:
What challenges do traffic engineers face when managing safety and traffic flow?
How do cities evaluate, fund, and purchase new traffic technology?
Which product benefits and messages matter most to municipal decision-makers?
How could traffic data create value for industries beyond city government?
Our approach
Bixa completed two complementary research initiatives to connect stakeholder needs with the broader market opportunity.
We conducted in-depth interviews with traffic engineers, municipal officials, and industry leaders in insurance, rideshare, and automotive OEMs. Using this insight, we built behavior-based personas outlining priorities, pain points, and decision triggers.
Traffic-engineer research: Bixa conducted 10 in-depth interviews with municipal and city traffic engineers. The research explored traffic-flow challenges, safety priorities, existing technology, investment criteria, maintenance concerns, and participants’ vision for the future of transportation.
Qualitative audience segmentation: Interviews revealed two distinct traffic-engineer segments: big-picture visionaries focused on the future of mobility and detail-oriented practitioners focused on immediate operational challenges. Bixa translated these behavioral patterns into buyer personas that clarified each group’s priorities, pain points, and decision triggers.
Smart-traffic landscape analysis: Bixa examined competing solutions, market leaders, technology trends, connectivity, regulatory considerations, cybersecurity, and the growing relationship between smart intersections and autonomous vehicles.
Revenue-opportunity analysis: The research explored how connected traffic data could support insurance risk assessment, claims analysis, rideshare efficiency, automotive applications, and other services beyond traffic management.
What we accomplished
Built a targeted municipal sales strategy
Bixa identified how traffic engineers evaluate new technology, including their emphasis on safety, crash reduction, maintenance, cost, and long-term infrastructure needs. Cox2M used these insights to develop buyer personas and messaging tailored to municipal priorities and decision-making processes.
Uncovered new traffic-data revenue opportunities
The research identified potential applications for traffic data across auto insurance, claims analysis, ridesharing, and automotive services. These opportunities expanded the product’s value beyond traffic optimization and informed Cox2M’s revenue strategy.
Aligned the product with real stakeholder needs
Interviews revealed cities’ most pressing challenges, including unreliable induction loops, limited crash data, maintenance costs, slow procurement processes, and difficulty adjusting signals to changing traffic conditions. These findings helped Cox2M align its product development and positioning with the realities of municipal traffic management.
A peek behind the curtain
Summary of specific pain points for municipal traffic engineers
Highlighted tools & techniques
In-depth interviews
One-on-one conversations with target customers, led by senior researchers, that go beyond surface-level answers to uncover the motivations, needs, experiences, and decision-making behind what people do. Our flexible format lets us probe into unexpected insights in real time, revealing the “why” behind customer behavior that surveys alone can’t capture.
Market sizing
Combines publicly available market data with quantitative survey findings to estimate your Total Addressable Market (TAM), Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM), and Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM). This puts real numbers behind an opportunity—showing how large the market is, how much is realistically relevant to your offering, and how much you could reasonably capture.
Competitive benchmarking
Measures your brand, product, or customer experience against key competitors using a consistent set of criteria. It shows where you lead, where competitors have an advantage, and where there may be opportunities to differentiate or raise the bar.
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