Last updated on Apr 30, 2024
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Market analysis is a crucial skill for product managers, as it helps them understand the needs, preferences, and trends of their target customers and competitors. But where can product managers find reliable and relevant data for market analysis? In this article, we will explore some of the best sources of data for market analysis and how to use them effectively.
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- Ryan McDougall Part of a set. Collect all eight.
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- Justin Dielmann Senior Product Manager at 6sense
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- Kuldeep K. S. Passionate Problem Solver, Optimizer, Product and Program Leader| Digital Craftsmanship: Where Technology Meets Human…
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1 Customer feedback
One of the most direct and valuable sources of data for market analysis is customer feedback. Customer feedback can help you identify the problems, pain points, and expectations of your users, as well as their satisfaction and loyalty. You can collect customer feedback through various methods, such as surveys, interviews, reviews, ratings, social media, and analytics. However, you need to be careful about how you design, distribute, and analyze your feedback tools, as they can be biased, incomplete, or misleading if not done properly.
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- Justin Dielmann Senior Product Manager at 6sense
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In my experience, customer feedback is crucial for providing context to less subjective methods of Market analysis, but if you count on it alone you will wind up making a product that only addresses the loudest voices not the most common use cases.
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- Kuldeep K. S. Passionate Problem Solver, Optimizer, Product and Program Leader| Digital Craftsmanship: Where Technology Meets Human Values | Intuitive Innovations with Human-Centered Tech for a Better World
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Customer feedback is one kind of data input into realizing the vision, validating hypothesis that are critical to establishing what you are looking for. In addition it should always be looked in sense of trends. It should be continuous and it should be carefully gathered to avoid corrupting it with biases, preconditions, misleading conclusions. Lastly, one should have a good sample before marking any informed decision or establishing conclusions.
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- Priyanka K Sannuvanda Senior Product Manager at McAfee
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Customer feedback is crucial. Using feedback analytics tools to consistently track user feedback can we helpful to identify areas with biggest customer pain points. Ex: Feedback analysis via getfeedback.com
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- Vivek Sharma CTO | Product Manager | Certified Scrum Master | SAAS | AI | NLG | NLP
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Customer feedback should be a weighted source of data. Depending upon if your product is driven by technology, driven by customers, or driven by product vision. An additional consideration is a phase at which the product or product feature is and also if it is B2B product offering or B2C offering in the same product. Social media, surveys might dilute the vision of the product or product offering or just creates confusion among the stakeholders reducing the growth of the product. As a best practice, even though being a very powerful method of designing the product/product feature, the weight of this component should be well understood in developing the product/ product feature.
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- Bryan H.
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It is crucial to approach customer feedback with caution. Designing, distributing, and analyzing feedback tools require careful consideration to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the data collected. Biases can arise if the sample of customers providing feedback is not representative of your target market. Incomplete or misleading feedback may result if the questions are poorly designed or if respondents are influenced by external factors. It is important to use validated and standardized measurement scales, include open-ended questions to capture detailed insights, and analyze the data objectively to derive meaningful conclusions.
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2 Market research
Another source of data for market analysis is market research, which is the systematic collection and analysis of data about a specific market, industry, or segment. Market research can help you understand the size, growth, structure, and dynamics of your market, as well as the opportunities and threats that exist. You can conduct market research through primary or secondary sources, depending on your budget, time, and objectives. Primary sources are data that you collect yourself, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, or experiments. Secondary sources are data that are already available, such as reports, publications, databases, or websites.
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- Atika Kumar AI and Digital Strategy Advisor | Transforming Businesses for the Digital Era
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In addition to above, I find conferences a great way to understand the market. Infact, attending them distills key trends without sifting through vast information that is available on the web. One doesn't have to attend the conferences real-time but can see recorded sessions that are often available post the event.
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3 Competitive analysis
A third source of data for market analysis is competitive analysis, which is the process of evaluating and comparing your competitors' products, strategies, strengths, and weaknesses. Competitive analysis can help you identify the gaps, trends, and best practices in your market, as well as your competitive advantage and differentiation. You can perform competitive analysis by using various tools, such as SWOT analysis, Porter's five forces, feature matrix, or benchmarking. You should also monitor your competitors' online presence, such as their websites, blogs, social media, reviews, and ratings.
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- Justin Dielmann Senior Product Manager at 6sense
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I agree, but competitive analysis should always be taken with a grain of salt. Commonly much of the competitor information you can find will be marketing information about their product. In addition, a competitor providing a feature does not necessarily mean that it is a good feature! You do not want your product to simply mirror what your competitors do instead you want to differentiate yourself from the rest of the market.
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4 Industry analysis
A fourth source of data for market analysis is industry analysis, which is the study of the external factors that affect your market, such as the economic, political, social, technological, environmental, and legal aspects. Industry analysis can help you assess the attractiveness, stability, and risks of your market, as well as the opportunities and threats that arise from the changes and developments in your industry. You can conduct industry analysis by using various frameworks, such as PESTEL analysis, Porter's diamond, or industry life cycle.
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5 Data analysis
A fifth source of data for market analysis is data analysis, which is the process of transforming, modeling, and interpreting data to extract meaningful insights and conclusions. Data analysis can help you measure, monitor, and optimize your product performance, customer behavior, and market trends. You can use various techniques, such as descriptive, inferential, predictive, or prescriptive analytics, depending on your goals and questions. You can also use various tools, such as spreadsheets, databases, dashboards, or visualization software, to organize, manipulate, and display your data.
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- Ryan McDougall Part of a set. Collect all eight.
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For many companies, this may be an under-utilized source. Rather than asking your users and customers about their intents and needs, invest in tools that help you actually *see* their behaviors. Reporting on actual behavior can often be more accurate (avoids response and sample biases) and helps contextualize other forms of research. Trust the user's own actions as a source of inferring what they might actually want, in concert with their qual & quant responses. Remember that most research and insights is more easily understood when presented with multiple sources. Customer behavior + competitive analysis + market research = a fuller picture of what users want and why they behave like they do.
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- Mauro Pitaluga Frontend Developer - Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science - Commercial Functional Analyst at YPF SA - CENIT Project
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Las mejores fuentes de datos para análisis de mercado pueden variar según la industria y los objetivos específicos del análisis, pero algunas fuentes comunes incluyen datos de ventas, encuestas a clientes, datos de redes sociales, datos demográficos, información de competidores, datos económicos y gubernamentales, entre otros. También se pueden considerar datos de investigación de mercado de empresas especializadas en el área de interés.
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- Chris Kirschten Senior Product Manager | Driving ambiguous concepts to launch | MBA | Pragmatic Institute Certified | 15 years in product management | Edtech | Education | Aerospace | PMP
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I agree with the prior comment that this may be underutilized, surprising also how challenging it can be to get access to company data, particularly across functional organizations.
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I find that data analysis is more often used to measure trends about whether the latest update had an impact on customer behavior. While quite useful for validating this, a far greater but less utilized approach is to use data analysis to inform the approach used for gathering customer and market feedback.
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6 Market validation
A sixth source of data for market analysis is market validation, which is the process of testing and validating your product idea, concept, or prototype with your target customers and stakeholders. Market validation can help you evaluate the feasibility, desirability, and viability of your product, as well as the feedback and suggestions for improvement. You can conduct market validation through various methods, such as MVPs, prototypes, landing pages, beta testing, or user testing. You should also define and track your key metrics, such as conversion, retention, or revenue, to measure your market validation results.
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- Atika Kumar AI and Digital Strategy Advisor | Transforming Businesses for the Digital Era
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For assessing the market through MVP, need to ensure that following aspects are taken into account: 1. Define your target market: Before building an MVP, understanding target market is for the analysis to be effective. 2. Create a hypothesis: Based on your understanding of your target market, create a hypothesis about what they need and how they will use your product. 3. Gather 360 Feedback & Iterate: Get feedback on the product's usability, value proposition and usage metrics. The insights received should then feed into the product backlog for iterating through the product to make it more appealing to your market. The consideration would be to focus on high impact features whilst balancing the complexity of enabling the features.
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- Santhosh Kumar Setty Product Leader | AI | B2B SaaS
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To ensure robust market validation, consider using a multi-tiered approach combining Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) with real-world A/B testing. For example, launch a simplified version of your product with core features to a small segment of your target audience. Track key metrics like user engagement, conversion rates, and customer feedback. Parallelly, conduct A/B tests to compare different product features or pricing strategies. This will not only validate the product's market fit but also provide granular insights into user preferences and behavior, thereby enabling more informed product development and marketing strategies.
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