market-researchlisted

# Market Research Market research fails in two directions and both are expensive. The first is the fact collection: forty slides of context, five charts from published reports, a competitor grid, and no answer to the question the work was commissioned to settle. It reads as thorough and it changes nothing, because at no point did anyone write down what finding would have led to a different decision. The second is worse because it survives longer. A single market size appears, sourced to a headline figure from a report nobody has read, and it becomes the number in the board pack, then the number in the fundraising deck, then the number in the plan. The first serious question about how it was built collapses the whole case, usually in front of the audience that mattered most. A market entry justified on a number that turns out to include hardware, adjacent categories, and a geography you cannot sell into costs a year of a team's time and the credibility of whoever presented it. This skill exists to make research that changes a decision and survives being questioned. Before gathering anything, write down the decision the research feeds and the finding that would change it. Research that cannot change the decision is decoration. ## When to use this, and when not to Use it for sizing a market or segment, deciding whether to enter a geography or a vertical, mapping who else serves a set of buyers and on what basis they win, assessing the market a partnership or acquisition tar