Market Intelligence: answers to the questions you actually have
We research the market questions that decide your next move from primary sources, and report what we found, how we found it and how far it can be trusted.
In brief
Market intelligence is commissioned research that answers the specific questions you have about a market: who buys, what makes them switch, how rivals sell and where regulation applies. We draw on primary sources, cross-check them, and report each finding with its strength, the method and an as-of date.
On this page
Why can a good report still miss your decision?
A general report describes a market as a whole. Your decision concerns one segment, one kind of buyer and a known set of rivals, and an average taken over the whole market may hold for none of them. Analyst summaries trail events, and press coverage is shaped by the firms it covers. A strategy lead who builds a plan on either is relying on an assumption that nobody tested: who actually buys, what makes them move, how a rival really sells.
The question itself is often the weaker part. Asked loosely, it gets an answer that lands beside the decision instead of on it. The cost arrives after entry or launch, when the buyer behaves differently from the report and the plan has already been committed to a board.
Market intelligence in our sense is commissioned work on your question. It is not an off-the-shelf report with your name added to the cover.
Which source sits nearest to each question?
Weak market work usually fails at one step: the source was not close to the behavior in question. A press article about a buyer is further from the buyer than the buyer is. We start from the question and ask where the answer would physically be written down or said aloud.
| The question | Sources nearest to it | The weakness we guard against |
|---|---|---|
| Who buys, and who signs | Buyers and the colleagues who shaped the purchase; public procurement papers where they exist | People describe the purchase they wish they had made. We ask about the last decision and what happened, not the ideal one. |
| What makes them move | Buyers who changed supplier recently, and those who considered it and stayed | A tidy story told afterward. We look for the trigger, such as a contract end or a ruling, and confirm it elsewhere. |
| How rivals position and sell | Their own pages, filings, product documentation, partner listings and job advertisements | Marketing copy states a hope. Hiring and documentation show what is being built. |
| Where regulation applies | The regulator's own texts, consultations and enforcement notices | Commentary that has aged. We read the provision itself and date it. |
| Whether a segment is worth entering | The answers above, read together, with public data where it is reliable | One source standing in for several. A claim that rests on one source is marked as such. |
How a market brief gets built
- 01
Questions
Written from the decision, each one specific enough to be shown wrong.
- 02
Source plan
Where each answer lives, and who must agree to speak.
- 03
Fieldwork
Conversations, documents and filings, logged as they arrive.
- 04
Cross-check
Sources set against each other; disagreements kept, not smoothed.
- 05
Brief
Written answers and a working session with the people deciding.
What the buyer conversations are, and are not
Conversations carry the weight on questions about motive, and we run them as research, not as sales calls. The person on the other end is told who is asking when you allow it, and told that what they say is used without their name unless they agree otherwise. We prepare the same core questions for each, so that answers can be compared, and we leave room for the thing we did not know to ask.
The weakness is plain. Buyers are a sample of people who agreed to talk, and what they tell us explains behavior without measuring how common it is. The brief says which findings rest on conversation, and does not present them as a measurement across the market.
A pattern we are called into
A real estate services business weighing an adjacent segment
A strategy lead at a real estate services business must recommend, before the board meets, whether to move into an adjacent segment. Analyst reports disagree about how attractive the segment is, and neither describes the buyer. The founder favors entry. The finance partner wants evidence that someone other than the founder has seen.
- The decision is turned into questions. Who buys in this segment, what makes them change supplier, and which incumbents are investing or retreating.
- Each question gets its sources. Buyers who recently changed supplier, incumbents' filings and hiring, and the regulator's texts on the segment's main compliance duty.
- The evidence disagrees. Incumbents' filings show investment, but buyers say they change supplier only when a contract ends or a rule forces it. Hiring shows incumbents building what buyers say they do not value.
- The cross-check shapes the brief. The segment is attractive for one kind of buyer and not the other. One claim about timing rests on a single source and is marked so.
Where it endsThe strategy lead takes a narrower recommendation to the board, with the single-source claim named as the thing to confirm before money moves, and with signals to watch that would show whether the thesis is holding.
A claim that rests on one source is reported as resting on one source.
What arrives, and what you do with it
The brief opens with answers to your questions in the order they matter to the decision. Each finding is labeled by how well it is supported: confirmed by independent sources, supported by one, reported by buyers or inferred from public signals. Where sources disagree the brief says so and explains which one we would trust more and why. It carries an as-of date on the first page, since a market description is a description of a day.
A map of rivals, drawn from what they publish, file and hire for, sits behind the answers. The source log lets your analyst check any line and extend the work without us. Last comes a short list of signals to watch, each with the development that would make a finding stale.
The working session is not a presentation. We bring the brief and the people who will decide sit with it, and the session ends with the choices the evidence supports and what each depends on.
Commission it, buy a published report, or do it in-house
A commissioned study costs more attention than a purchased report, because we need your people at the start and at the working session.
Commissioning fits when
- The decision is specific: a segment to enter, an offer to position, a rival's move to answer
- The answer would change what you do, and you would need to show the evidence to a board or an investor
- No published report describes your buyer, only the market around them
- A regulation or a rival's move has changed the ground since the last report was written
Another route is better when
- You need a broad outline of a market for orientation, where a published report is cheaper and sufficient
- You need statistical measurement across a population, which belongs with a survey specialist
- The decision has been made and you want support for it, since we report what the evidence shows
- Your own team has the access and the hours, and wants only a second pair of eyes
You give up the speed of a report you can download today. You gain an answer built around your segment, which a report cannot be.
What the brief cannot do
Some questions cannot be answered from public sources and interviews, and when that is so the brief says which ones and why. We describe a market on a date. We do not forecast its results.
- Buyer conversations are qualitative. They explain behavior and do not measure it.
- We do not name the people we speak to unless they agree.
- We do not guarantee that a market will behave as the evidence suggests.
- Access to buyers sometimes depends on you. If you can introduce them, the work is faster and the evidence closer.
Published briefings that show the method
Commissioned findings belong to the client, so what we can show openly is our own research. The briefings and the report below show how we read a market from primary sources.
What buyers ask before commissioning market research
How is commissioned research different from the briefings you publish?
The published briefings cover developments we choose, for a general audience. Commissioned research answers your questions about your segment, is written for your decision and is confidential to you. Both state their sources and carry an as-of date.
Who will you talk to, and will they know it is for us?
Buyers, experts and people close to your competitors, chosen for the question. Whether we name you is your decision. We can speak under our own name without disclosing the client, and we never name an interviewee without consent.
Can you research a market we are not in yet?
Yes, and that is one reason to commission it. Without an existing customer base, the evidence comes from buyers in the market, regulators' publications, competitors' filings and the way incumbents hire and sell.
What do we do with the findings afterward?
You decide, and the working session is built for that. The brief ends with the choices the evidence supports and what each depends on. If you want help acting on them, we scope it separately.
Related
Which question about your market would change your next move?
Describe what you are weighing in a few lines. A senior practitioner replies with a suggested first conversation.