Product managers love to ask for middle-range research that they can use to justify decisions they’re reluctant to make on their own. UX designers love to ask for middle-range research because it fits their model of what a proper design process should look like. Executives love to ask for the middle-range because they don’t really understand what UX Research is for, and it helps them do performative user-centeredness. In the end they will decide based on their own opinions.