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Ask HN: Do you use market research for your business?
I'm interested in knowing if you use market research to help your business grow? If so, has it been helpful? Did you feel it was a waste of money and why?
If it's possible, I'd also be interested in how much you spent and what kind of research it is? (i.e. custom survey, focus groups, reports, etc.) Thanks in advance!
Disclaimer: Reposting this question as I didn't get any responses in the first one. Sorry for the spam.
- chrisgoodrich 12y agoMarket research is imperative to success, but it may not always look like you'd expect. Note that I come from a B2B software product management background. Market research is a major part of my job, but I don't think I have ever called it market research. Big companies often place a lot of value in more formalized research studies to drive corporate strategy. This is very top-down. I prefer, and often drive, more lean research initiatives. Working in startups, there isn't budget or time for formalized research studies. Instead I have often used more scrappy methods of customer development to test ideas with prototypes. A one hour conversation with 10 people in your target market will likely give you enough information to form a hypothesis about what problems people are willing to pay to have solved.
- tixocloud 12y agoThanks for the great insight and a really good point on the wording "market research". Would there be another specific term that you use to describe your task? For your leaner research initiatives, do you ever leverage high-level customer or country profiles?
- chrisgoodrich 12y agoSteve Blank calls it Customer Development in his book The Four Steps to the Epiphany. I highly recommend reading his book.
- iovrthoughtthis 12y agoHave you looked at The Four Steps to Epiphany? Depending on your companies situation / stage it might have some interesting insight on using market research.
- tixocloud 12y agoThanks for pointing it out. I'll have a look at it again in detail - I skimmed through the section towards the other phases.