Glossary

Market research

The gathering and analysis of information about buyers, market size, and demand patterns — distinct from competitive intelligence.

Market research is the discipline of understanding buyers: what they want, how they buy, what they're willing to pay, how the market is growing. It is complementary to but distinct from competitive intelligence (which focuses on what competitors are doing).

Three common market research methods:

Surveys — quantitative buyer preference data
Customer interviews — qualitative depth on motivations
Secondary research — analyst reports, public market data

Market research is typically done at project cadence (quarterly, annually) because buyer preferences move slower than competitor moves. Competitive intelligence is typically done at weekly cadence because competitors move faster.

In a healthy strategy practice, market research and competitive intelligence run in parallel: market research tells you which doors are worth opening; competitive intelligence tells you which doors competitors are running through right now.

Conflating the two is a common mistake. Marketing teams that only do market research stay current on buyer trends but get blindsided by competitor moves. Teams that only do competitive intelligence stay current on competitors but miss shifts in underlying buyer demand.

Example

A market research project might reveal that 70% of SMB marketing teams plan to add an AI tool in the next 12 months. That's a buyer-demand signal. Competitive intelligence might then reveal that two of your competitors just launched AI features at $49/mo — that's a competitor-move signal. The two together inform whether you should ship faster, reprice, or reposition.

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