Market & Competitive Discovery

What is Market Research?

The process of gathering information about your target market — size, growth, customer needs, and dynamics — to inform strategy and prioritize discovery efforts.

Key Questions Market Research Answers

• How big is the addressable market (TAM/SAM/SOM)?
• What are the major segments and how are they growing/shrinking?
• What regulatory, economic, or technological forces shape the market?

Primary vs. Secondary Research

• Primary — research you conduct yourself (interviews, surveys with your own audience).
• Secondary — existing reports, industry publications, analyst research, public data.

Use secondary research to quickly orient yourself, then primary research to validate specifics for your product.

TAM, SAM, SOM

• TAM (Total Addressable Market) — everyone who could ever want this category of solution.
• SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market) — the part of TAM you can realistically reach given your business model/geography.
• SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market) — the slice you can realistically capture given competition and resources.

Why Analyze Competitors?

Competitors reveal what users currently do to solve their problem (even imperfect alternatives count), pricing norms, and gaps you can exploit. "Competitors" includes indirect alternatives — spreadsheets, manual processes, or doing nothing at all.

What to Analyze

• Positioning — how they describe themselves and to whom.
• Feature set — what's table-stakes vs. differentiated.
• Pricing model — how they monetize.
• Customer sentiment — reviews, social mentions, complaints.
• Strengths and weaknesses from the customer's point of view, not just feature checklists.

Methods

Try the competitor's product hands-on, read reviews (G2, Capterra, app stores), read their marketing site and sales materials, and talk to customers who switched to or from them.

What is Benchmarking?

Benchmarking compares your product's specific metrics or capabilities against competitors and industry standards using consistent criteria, rather than a vague qualitative impression.

Building a Benchmark Matrix

Create a table: rows are evaluation criteria (e.g. onboarding time, pricing tiers, key feature support), columns are you vs. each competitor. Score each cell to spot clear gaps and advantages at a glance.

Metrics Worth Benchmarking

• Time-to-value / onboarding friction.
• Pricing relative to comparable feature sets.
• Performance metrics (load time, uptime) if relevant to the category.
• Customer satisfaction scores (NPS, review ratings) where public.

Using Benchmark Results

Benchmarking should inform where to focus, not trigger blind feature-matching — copying every competitor feature ignores whether your users actually need it.

Why Track Trends?

Trends reveal where the market and user expectations are heading, helping discovery teams anticipate needs rather than only react to current complaints.

Types of Trends to Watch

• Technology trends — new platforms, AI capabilities, infrastructure shifts.
• Behavioral trends — how user expectations and habits are shifting (e.g. mobile-first, async work).
• Regulatory trends — privacy laws, industry-specific compliance changes.
• Economic trends — budget pressures, buyer behavior shifts in downturns/upturns.

Sources for Trend Analysis

Industry analyst reports, conference talks, founder/VC commentary, search trend tools, and patterns noticed directly in your own research (recurring requests that didn't exist a year ago).

Balancing Trends with Evidence

Trends are directional signals, not proof. Validate a trend's relevance to your users with direct research before betting a roadmap on it — chasing every hype cycle is its own form of discovery failure.