SERVICE
Market & customer research
I help you understand who might need your offer, how they solve the problem today and what would make them consider something different. Market and customer research gives an early idea or business decision a more informed starting point.
Market research examines the wider landscape: competitors, substitutes, relevant trends and the conditions in which an offer would compete.
Customer research looks more closely at the people or organisations making a purchasing decision, including their needs, priorities and concerns.
Those questions overlap with user research when the buyer and user are the same person. In other settings, such as software purchased for employees, their perspectives can differ substantially. We start with the decision you need to make and choose research that can meaningfully inform it.
QUESTIONS THE RESEARCH CAN ANSWER
Who has the problem, and who makes the buying decision?
Identify the people who experience the need, the people who buy and the influences on their decision. A useful audience definition goes beyond a demographic description. It considers the situation in which a need arises, how important it is, what people already do about it and who has the authority or budget to choose a different approach.
I can help frame potential segments and investigate them through customer interviews and relevant existing evidence. In a business context, that may mean hearing from users, managers and decision-makers separately. We use the findings to sharpen the audience definition and identify meaningful differences between groups, keeping assumptions visible where the evidence is still limited.
What are customers using instead?
Understand the competing products, services and workarounds your offer would have to improve on. The alternative to a new product may be a competitor, a spreadsheet, a colleague's help or a decision to leave the problem unresolved.
Each option has advantages that matter to the person using it, even when it appears inefficient from outside.
Competitive and alternative research examines those choices in context. We can compare how they address the need, where they create frustration and what would make switching worthwhile. The result helps reveal useful opportunities and constraints: the familiarity people would give up, the effort of changing and the value a new solution would need to provide.
What would make people consider a different solution?
Explore needs, buying triggers and objections, with attention to what people have actually done. Customer interviews can help uncover the events that prompt a search, the criteria used to compare options and the concerns that delay a purchase.
Questions about recent decisions and existing behaviour often give a more useful starting point than asking people to imagine whether they would buy an unfamiliar product.
We can also investigate perceived value, pricing expectations and adoption barriers. Expressed enthusiasm is useful context, but decisions about demand may need further evidence, such as a pilot or an appropriate behavioural experiment. I help separate what the research supports from what still needs to be tested.
Which opportunities deserve further investment?
Turn the findings into a focused view of the audience, opportunity and next questions to investigate. Research becomes useful when it changes a decision. I bring the findings together around your original question, showing the strongest patterns, differences between customer groups and gaps that affect the conclusion.
Depending on the brief, the outcome might include a prioritised audience, a comparison of alternatives, opportunity areas and a recommendation for the next experiment. Where credible data is available, we can also use it to assess the scale and characteristics of a market. The result gives product discovery or strategy a clearer basis, with the evidence and remaining uncertainty available to your team.
CASE STUDY
Where should we start?
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