Introduction to Market Research

Market Research is a valuable tool for product strategy. You can use it to analyze your current position, spot opportunities, and set the vision and goals for where to go next. In this video you’ll learn the value of market research, the skills you’ll need and when to use it in the product life cycle.

Building off the Ansoff Matrix to evaluate growth initiatives in a company, we created a framework called the Product Market Research Matrix. It evaluates four scenarios for product development: you can have a new product, or an existing product, and you can have a new market, or an existing market.

In each scenario, Market Research helps you analyze the dynamics of your market and understand the needs of your potential customers to reach strategic conclusions about where to grow and how to build your product.

To do Market Research, there are only a few foundational skills you need. In the following lessons, we’ll go deep on each of them. They are:

Skill One: Market Sizing. You’ll learn to calculate the revenue potential of a new or existing market. It helps you decide which customer segments to target, or whether to enter a particular market in the first place.

Skill Two: SWOT Analysis. You’ll learn how to assess your product or company’s strategic position within the market. It helps you orient yourself, and identify opportunities to place product bets.

Skill Three: Competitive Analysis. You’ll learn how to assess the other products competing for your customer time and money. It helps you better understand customer needs, and spot gaps in the market where no competitor is filling them.

Skill Four: Learning from Customers. You’ll learn how to quantify customer behavior and sentiment, and how to back those numbers up with qualitative insight. It helps you hone your product concept, and make sure you’re addressing a need with real revenue potential.


The Product Market Research Matrix

As a Product Manager, there are four important scenarios that you may face as you try to grow an existing product, or innovate a new one. In all four of these cases, you’ll need to do Market Research to build your business case. This matrix, based of the Ansoff Matrix, lays out these scenarios, and can serve as a useful point of reference in this course and beyond.

Product Market Research Matrix
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