Market Researcher

---
name: market-researcher
description: Conduct market research — sizing, segmentation, competitor analysis, surveys, and actionable market intelligence.
category: business-marketing
---

## Overview

Market research replaces opinions with evidence about markets: how big they are, who the customers are, what competitors do, and where the openings lie. This skill covers both secondary research (existing data, reports, public sources) and primary research (surveys, interviews), plus the synthesis that turns findings into strategy.

## When to use

- Sizing a market for a business plan or pitch
- Segmenting customers for targeting
- Profiling competitors systematically
- Validating demand before a launch
- Choosing between market opportunities
- Tracking market trends over time

- Sizing new market opportunities
- Testing product concepts before building
- Understanding competitive positioning
## Core concepts

**TAM/SAM/SOM.** Total market → the portion you can serve → the portion you can realistically capture. Build bottom-up (customer count × price × penetration) — it's more credible and more useful than top-down percentages.

**Segmentation.** Divide the market by needs, behavior, or characteristics — not just demographics. Good segments are measurable, reachable, sizable, and internally similar. Pick segments to serve; you can't serve everyone well.

**Competitor analysis.** Direct competitors (same solution), indirect (different solution, same job), and the status quo (spreadsheets, manual work, doing nothing). Profile each: positioning, pricing, strengths, weaknesses, customer sentiment from reviews.

**Primary vs. secondary research.** Secondary first (fast, cheap: reports, government data, company filings, reviews, forums). Primary when secondary can't answer it (surveys for quantification, interviews for depth). Never pay for primary research that secondary already answers.

**Survey design.** One concept per question, neutral wording, balanced scales, screeners to qualify respondents, and sample sizes that support the claims you'll make. Bad questions produce confident-sounding garbage.

**Synthesis.** Research is worthless until synthesized: key findings, implications, and recommendations. A 50-page data dump is not a deliverable; a 5-page insight brief is.


**Jobs-to-be-done interviews.** Instead of asking about demographics or feature preferences, uncover the progress customers are trying to make: the struggling moment, what they tried, what worked and did not, and what finally resolved it. JTBD interviews reveal demand that surveys miss because they start from real behavior.

**Conjoint analysis.** For pricing and feature trade-offs: present respondents with packages varying across attributes and prices, and derive the utility of each attribute. Conjoint quantifies what customers value enough to pay for — far more reliable than asking "would you pay for X?"

**Quantitative methods.** Surveys (n=400+ for statistical significance), MaxDiff (feature prioritization), conjoint (price/feature trade-offs), and brand trackers (longitudinal awareness and perception).
Design surveys carefully: unbiased questions, balanced scales, attention checks, and representative sampling.
Garbage sampling produces garbage insights — invest in panel quality.
**Qualitative methods.** In-depth interviews (why behind the what), focus groups (social dynamics and reactions), ethnography (observed behavior in context), and diary studies (longitudinal experience).
Qual explains quant — run qual first to know what to measure, quant second to measure it at scale.
**Secondary research.** Industry reports, analyst data, academic studies, competitor filings, and public datasets.
Always start here — someone has often already answered 60% of your question.
Triangulate: no single source is gospel; convergence across sources is truth.
## Practical workflow

1. **Define research questions.** What decisions will this inform? Write 3–5 specific questions. Everything else is scope creep.
2. **Mine secondary sources.** Industry reports, government statistics, company filings and earnings calls, review sites, forums and communities, job postings (reveals competitor priorities), pricing pages. Document sources for every key figure.
3. **Size the market.** Build TAM/SAM/SOM bottom-up. Cross-check with at least two methods. State assumptions explicitly.
4. **Profile competitors.** Build a comparison matrix: offering, pricing, positioning, target customer, strengths, weaknesses, recent moves. Read their customers' reviews — complaints are opportunity maps.
5. **Run primary research if needed.** Surveys for "how many/how much" (n=200+ for directional, more for precision), interviews for "why/how" (15–20 until saturation). Write the discussion guide before recruiting.
6. **Synthesize and recommend.** Structure: executive summary → findings by question → implications → recommendations → appendix with methodology. Every recommendation ties to a finding; every finding ties to evidence.

**Competitor matrix columns:** company, offering, pricing model, target segment, key strengths, key weaknesses, customer sentiment (review themes), recent moves, threat level.


**Interview discussion guide (45 min):** 5 min warm-up and context → 15 min current behavior (how do you handle X today? walk me through the last time) → 15 min pain points (what is hardest? what have you tried? what did it cost?) → 10 min wrap (who else should I talk to? can I follow up?). Record with permission; synthesize within 48 hours while fresh.

**Research plan template:** business question → research questions (3–5) → hypotheses → methodology (why this method?) → sample plan → timeline → analysis plan → deliverable format → decision it informs.
Every research project ties to a decision — research without a decision is curiosity, not business.
**Insight communication:** executive summary (one page: answer, evidence, recommendation) → detailed findings → methodology appendix → raw data access.
Lead with the answer, not the journey — stakeholders want conclusions first.
## Common pitfalls

- **Research as procrastination.** Endless research to avoid deciding. Timebox it; decide with 70% information.
- **Confirmation bias.** Designing research to prove what you already believe. Write down your hypothesis first, then genuinely try to disprove it.
- **Top-down sizing theater.** "1% of a $50B market" tells you nothing about reachable customers.
- **Ignoring indirect competition.** The spreadsheet and the "do nothing" option beat more startups than direct rivals do.
- **Biased surveys.** Leading questions ("How much do you love...?"), double-barreled questions, and unrepresentative samples produce misleading confidence.
- **Data without implications.** Delivering findings without saying what they mean for strategy. Always answer "so what?"
- **Stale research.** Markets move. Date your research and refresh key figures annually.
- **Small-sample quantification.** "3 out of 5 interviewees said..." Interviews reveal depth, not percentages. Never quantify from qualitative samples.
- **Ignoring non-customers.** Researching only your users misses why everyone else chose differently. Lost prospects and competitor customers are the richest source.
- **Asking leading questions.** "How much do you love our product?" produces useless affirmation. Neutral wording, or the data is fiction.
- **Research theater.** Commissioning studies to justify pre-made decisions. If the decision is already made, skip the research and own the call.