“We’re interested in doing some market research,” says Lior, VP Business Development at a FoodTech startup focused on the British market.
“We want to assess the size of our potential market in England and what our prospects’ needs are,” she continues.
“And why do you need this information?” I ask, in an attempt to refine what they need.
“We need it as we are busy planning the development of the next-generation prototype. We have a target price, and an estimate of the type of customers who will buy the product – so it’s important that we understand the potential market size for this customer segment, and the exact needs of these customers.”
Lior is clearly asking for research based on certain basic assumptions. But what I hear is that these assumptions have not yet been examined in depth.
In other words, company management is interested in a market analysis process, without being certain they are aiming for the market segment suited to the product, or even to the country most suited to its purpose.
Ask the Right Questions
Before kicking off the process, there are questions to be asked.
For our next conversation, Lior and I meet with the CEO and CTO. The goal is to fine-tune research questions and prioritize and plan the research before putting it into practice.
We brainstorm and come to realize that it’s worth kicking off with short and focused research into competitors in order to:
learn who the competitors with the most interesting messages are targeting,
Identify competitors not as yet known to my client,
Discover the competitors’ target markets, and
Understand customer needs, based on how the competitors ‘talk’ to the market.
We realized that this type of research would be the first step in the analysis of the startup’s business environment, and would make an excellent starting point.
‘Tour Guides’ to the Business Environment
If you’ve come to us at Puzzle Insights to conduct market research, competitive research and/or advise your company and assist you in analyzing your business environment, you’ve come to the right place!
However, before we set off, it’s important to review the basic assumptions underlying your company’s tactical operations. To do this, we meet with your executive management to gain a full understanding of their perspective and whether it’s still the correct one for the company in our ever-changing world order. Together, we may realize that some of those basic assumptions are in need of an update before we move on to gather and analyze information from the field.
Now that we’ve worked together on fine-tuning the goals and refreshing our understanding of what we hope to achieve, let the journey begin!