Finding out before spending

Market research is finding out whether people want what you are planning to make, before you spend a year making it.

Why it matters most for a small business, where a wrong decision consumes savings that cannot be replaced. A large company running a failed product loses a project; a small business running one loses the business.

What it can tell you. Whether the problem you think exists actually does. Who has it. What they currently do instead. What they would pay. Who else is solving it. And how many of them there are.

What it cannot tell you. Whether people will actually buy, which only selling establishes. Research reduces uncertainty rather than removing it, and treating it as proof is its own mistake.

The most common failure is asking whether somebody likes an idea, because people are polite, they underestimate their own future behaviour, and an enthusiastic yes from a friend costs them nothing. Everybody who has built something on that response has learned the same lesson.

So the questions that work are about the past rather than the future. What did you do last time this happened, what did you pay, how long did it take, what did you try before. Behaviour already exhibited is evidence; an intention stated is not.

And it does not need a budget. Twenty conversations with people in your market is genuine research and it is available to anybody willing to have them.