Where to start our market research?
Our product is a cloud based application available cross platform. It's functionality, summed up, is to help you share the books you read with your friends.
We are in the stages of market research, but I personally do not know where to start my desk research. I know I can look at our competition on app stores, but to be honest I am not sure where to go next.
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A market research about *SaaS* solely as a concept would be as useful as a molecular analysis of distilled water. Specify your question further, please. – Tom 12 years ago
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is there a need for this? What does it do that facebook or twitter or amazon don't do? – Tim J 12 years ago
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The idea is not the issue here. I am more concerned about how to conduct market research on the software industry. – Max Willmo 12 years ago
3 Answers
The main function you are offering is social by nature. Users can already do that using generic social network (e.g. facebook). I would start with two things:
- Qualitative Research - find people who have shared books on facebook (or other networks) and try to understand what's their motivation in doing this, when are they doing this, where, with what books and what friends. I would try to do that with a few dozens of people and try to identify patterns and groups that behave the same.
- Quantitative Research - Try to measure how many people are already doing that as percentage of people who read books and are active on facebook. I would also try to compare with how much people are sharing other paid content (like songs or movies).
The first part will give you a great insight on how to focus your product and the second part will allow you to start assessing how big the market is. You can probably say that people will be more likely to share on a dedicated network or with a dedicated tool but it's probably a 2x rather than a 10x of what people are already doing today.
Another great way to find out more about your market is by searching forum posts and replies. As comment above your business is based on customers being social and talkative with friends online. These people will probably be social on other networking sites like forums.
Further to this, why not ask your own quesitons on these forums and find out the answer to your own specific questions.
I would also note that before you start your market research you need to really understand who your customer is and where you are most likely to find them.
I'd recommend to hire professionals for several hours/days and be sure in the results. For ex you may check this guys: singularex.com
