When to Conduct Market Research for Startup

In the past decade, we have seen an abundance of newborn technology companies achieve hyper-growth, that have led them to be able to compete with the giants in just a short period of time. The term startup has emerged as one of the most-used buzzwords.

And it seems like everybody else don’t want to miss out on the taste of the startup success. However, hundreds and thousands other tech startups are constantly emerging and unfortunately, a 90% rate of failure exists. So, what went terribly wrong with these startups? Interestingly enough, among the 90% of startups that fail, a big portion of them are well funded. This automatically eliminates money as an issue of failure.

Essentially, the main problem here is that most startups fail to address the needs of the market, what the market wants and how to market them.

From here onwards, we know that start-ups have to validate their idea, find out their customer’s needs and how to market the product.

In order to answer those essential questions, startups have to continuously learn and listen to their target markets by doing market research.

Those random ideas you get when you’re in the midst of a hot shower or sipping a margarita in Bali have a possibility of being a billion dollar idea, but validation from your customers are needed in order to remove assumptions. To do so, here’s what you need:
Below contains several key market research topics which I consider, crucial for all startups to do frequently.

Firstly, identify these key questions:

Idea Validation

What is the idea about?
Does the market need it?
How will this idea solve the customer’s problems?
Is it product-market fit?

Market Validation

To whom would the product/service benefit?
What would consumers use it for?
What their behavior is towards these kind of on-trend products/services
Will my customers become a better version of themselves if they use my product?
Where will they buy it?

Business Validation

Can I make money out of it?
Is it scalable?

In order to answer these questions, market research can be conducted to validate your own calculations about your business. The market research objectives to explore are shown as below:

1. Product Insights
   The objective of product insights are to validate whether or not there is a high interest level of your product or service. Product insights are divided into smaller chunks of studies, which are: concept testing, concept appeal level, concept purchase intent, product A/B testing and pricing & promotion. Product insights are valuable to continuously test your MVP.

2. Consumer Insights
   Consumer insights identify key information from your target consumers. For startups, you can apply the Usage and Attitude study to uncover customer behavior towards your product or service. These include willingness to pay, purchase frequency, purchasing decision drivers and purchasing channel. Another consumer insight method that startups can use is the Customer Journey cycle study, to map your customer’s journey before, during and after purchase. With consumer insights will it provide you business validation, answering the questions of how you can make money out of your product or service.

3. Market Insights
   Market insights are important for startups, this type of market research helps to identify the market trends, opportunities, landscape and competition analysis. The results of this study will provide a deep knowledge of the present market landscape in your target market (e.g. regional, or country). It will also help you to answer whether or not your business is scalable.