Market and Competitive Research
What we've learned so far
Research is worth commissioning when a real decision is waiting: whether to enter a market, what to charge, which segment to build for, or whether an opportunity is large enough to justify the investment. Its return is avoided cost. A few weeks spent establishing that the opportunity is smaller than assumed is the cheapest outcome available in product work.
Most of what we have been shown was assembled to justify a decision already taken. It is thorough, it cites sources and it changes nothing. We scope to the fork rather than to the market, and we take a position at the end, because a report that lists findings and stops has moved nothing. The second thing worth saying is that feature matrices are the least useful artefact in this category. Features are easy to copy and rarely explain why anyone buys. Pricing structure, onboarding, support model, who a company refuses to serve and what they have quietly stopped doing are far more informative, and all of it is observable without access to anyone's internal data.
Models will now produce a market report in minutes, and it will be fluent, structured and confidently wrong in places you cannot see. They are trained on what has been published, which means they reproduce the market's own narrative about itself, including the parts that are marketing. We use them to cover ground quickly, then verify the claims that the decision actually rests on. The value is no longer in gathering information. It is in knowing which three facts the decision turns on and being willing to be accountable for the recommendation.
What this can involve
Positioning and Pricing
Business Case Development
Opportunity Assessment
Pricing and Positioning Analysis
Category and Trend Research
Competitive Benchmarking
Competitor Analysis Services
Survey and Data Analysis
Customer Interviews
Market Research Services
User Research Services
Persona Development
How we work
Establish the decision, not the topic
Whether to enter a market, what to charge, which segment to build for. We scope to the fork rather than to the market, because research without a decision attached produces a document nobody acts on.
Identify the few facts it turns on
Most decisions rest on three or four things. Naming them early is what stops the work becoming a survey of everything that could be known about a category.
Look at behaviour rather than feature lists
Pricing structure, onboarding, support model, who a competitor refuses to serve and what they have quietly stopped doing. Features are easy to copy and rarely explain why anyone buys.
Talk to people who chose something else
Your lost deals and your competitors' customers. This is the hardest part to arrange and consistently the most useful, because it is the only source that is not the market describing itself.
Take a position and be accountable for it
We say what we think you should do and why, including when the answer is that the opportunity is smaller than you hoped. A report that lists findings and stops has moved nothing.
Where this isn't the right fit
If the decision is already made, research will either waste your money or embarrass you. Most of what we are shown in this category was assembled to justify a conclusion somebody had already reached, and it is honest to say that upfront.
If you need a broad overview of a category rather than an answer to a specific question, a model will produce something fluent in minutes and it will cost you nothing. It will also be confidently wrong in places you cannot see, which is fine for orientation and not for a decision. And if you are not prepared to act on an answer you did not want, this is not worth commissioning.
