Handsomeboy990 Market Research
A market assessment drives a real decision about where to spend real money and time, so its figures have to be honest. The failure mode is the top-down fantasy: a huge total market, a made-up "we only need 1 percent", and a number nobody can source. This skill sizes markets from evidence, maps real competitors, and states its confidence, because a business decision built on an invented number fails expensively.
1. Size the market honestly
bottom-up prefer building the size from real units: the number of potential
customers times a realistic price times a realistic adoption; grounded
and defensible
top-down a total-market figure from a source is context, not the answer; "the
global market is X billion" says nothing about the reachable, winnable
share
reachable distinguish the total market, the market the provider can actually
serve, and the share they could realistically win; conflating them is
the classic overstatement
sourced every figure is from a live source, or an estimate with its method and
assumptions stated, per opportunity-core; never a number with no
derivation
The "we only need 1 percent of a huge market" argument is a warning sign, not a plan. Size what is reachable, from the bottom up, with sources.
2. Map the real competitors
real the actual competitors, from live sources; who serves this market now,
including the incumbents and the substitutes customers use instead
position what each does, for whom, at what price, with what strength and
weakness; from their real product and pricing, not their marketing
gap where the competitors are weak, absent, or serving a segment poorly;
the gap is the opportunity, and it is found by mapping who is there, not
by assuming no one is
honest "no competitors" almost always means the market does not exist or they
were not looked for; find the substitutes, because customers solve the
problem somehow today
3. Find the real segments and their needs
segments the distinct groups within the market, each with different needs,
willingness to pay, and reachability; a market is rarely uniform
needs what each segment actually needs, from real signals: reviews of
existing solutions, public complaints, stated demands, not assumption
reachable which segments the provider can actually reach and serve; the most
attractive segment is worthless if it cannot be reached
4. Identify trends and confidence
trends the real, sourced direction of the market: growing, shifting,
consolidating, from dated evidence, not a narrative
confidence stated per finding, per research-core's standard: a well-sourced size
is high confidence, a bottom-up estimate is moderate, a segment need
inferred from thin signals is low; the reader acts on the confidence
gaps what could not be established, and what it means for the decision;
an honest gap beats a confident invention
5. Assess the opportunity
assessment given the reachable size, the competitive gap, the reachable segments,
and the trends: is this a real opportunity, for this actor, and where
conditional the assessment names the conditions and the confidence; a moderate-
confidence opportunity is presented as such, not as a certainty
honest when the research shows the market is small, crowded, or unreachable,
say so; that finding saves the actor from an expensive mistake, and it
is the most valuable output a market research can produce
6. Prohibitions
- Never present a top-down total market as the reachable opportunity.
- Never use "we only need X percent" as a sizing method.
- Never state a market figure without a source or a stated estimation method.
- Never claim "no competitors"; find the substitutes customers use today.
- Never infer a segment need from assumption and present it as established.
- Never present a market assessment as more certain than the sources support.
- Never talk the actor into a market the evidence shows is small or crowded.
7. Protocol
- Size the market bottom-up where possible; separate total, serviceable, and winnable; source every figure or state its method.
- Map the real competitors and substitutes, with their positioning and gaps.
- Identify the segments, their real needs, and their reachability.
- Establish the trends from dated evidence.
- State confidence per finding and name the gaps.
- Assess the opportunity conditionally, for this actor, with its confidence.
- Report a small, crowded, or unreachable market honestly when that is the finding.
8. Auto-critique
Score from 0 to 5: sizing bottom-up and separating total from reachable, every figure sourced or method-stated, competitors and substitutes real, segments and needs evidenced, trends dated, confidence stated per finding, assessment conditional and honest including an unfavourable finding.
Threshold: no axis below 3, average at least 4. A top-down fantasy sizing, a "we only need 1 percent" argument, or an unsourced market figure caps the score until fixed, per opportunity-core.
9. Interfaces
- Upstream:
opportunity-corefor grounding,research-corefor the evidence and confidence standard. - Downstream:
idea-evaluationuses the market assessment to test a demand assumption,client-discoveryuses the segments,synthesis-reportingandreport-writingrender the assessment for a decision. - Lateral:
competitive-analysisinresearch/for the deep competitor comparison;source-verificationfor the weighty market claims.
10. Live sources
Market research reads whatever market data, competitor, and search sources the runtime exposes, and states each figure with its source or its estimation method. When a needed source is unreachable, it says so and gives a bottom-up estimate with its assumptions labelled, rather than borrowing a top-down number it cannot verify. The most dangerous output is a confident market size with no derivation, because a real budget gets committed against it; the discipline is that every number can be traced to a source or an explicit, checkable assumption.