Market Research
Market Research
What is market research?
- Systematic research on customers, markets, and competitors
- Decide on evidence, not gut feeling
- Quantitative (surveys) + qualitative (interviews)
What market research actually changes is not a single report but the order in which people speak in the meeting room. Before research, “I’ve been in this business for 20 years, I know” is the strongest argument; afterward, “62% of 214 decision-makers answered this way” takes its place. The first effect of research is shifting the debate from who said it to what has been verified. The second is speed. Once the evidence is documented, you don’t have to restart the same argument from scratch three months later, and if a decision turns out to be wrong, you have a record to trace where it went wrong.
Research is usually built up in three layers. Desk research uses association statistics, public filings, and import records to size the market and see where it is heading. In-depth interviews dig into the reasons behind those numbers. Surveys then measure how widespread those reasons are. Reverse the order and run the survey first, and the answer options themselves reflect your own biases, so the survey simply confirms them. In B2B, who is in the sample matters more than how many. You can’t gather 1,000 respondents as in consumer goods, but 30 people who are actually in the approval chain are more accurate than 300 hands-on staff. In our experience, 8–12 in-depth interviews are enough for the same answers to start repeating, and if you plan to break results down by segment, a survey needs at least 150–200 responses.
It also helps to draw a line between research and experiments. Research measures what people say; experiments measure what they will pay for. A survey might show 70% intent to adopt while actual contracts come in at 5%. Respondents are not lying; the survey simply leaves out constraints such as budgeting, approval chains, and existing supplier relationships. So the bigger the decision, the more you should treat research results as a list of hypotheses to test, not a final answer, and close the last gap with something where money changes hands, such as a pre-order or a paid pilot.
The most common failure in practice is research that fixes the conclusion first and then collects supporting evidence. If it is run to justify a decision after development has already started, the questionnaire is leading from the first question, such as “Do you need this feature?”, and the answer always comes back “yes.” Even riskier is who you ask. Demand for a new market gathered only from existing customers is the voice of people who have already chosen us, and it never tells you why non-buyers don’t buy. This is how a company ends up wrapping up its new-market research with 20 customer interviews, spending the development budget, and then signing zero new contracts in the six months after launch. It means losing hundreds of millions of won in development costs to save KRW 3 million (≈ US$2,240) on research.
John KimInstructor John Kim, author of B2B Marketing Design and CEO of Nanum Consulting
Seungtae ParkAI transformation practitioner who teaches AI business development and marketing automation by building the tools himselfA foundational field of marketing, it took shape alongside advances in consumer research and statistical methods in the 20th century.
Consider a hypothetical case. Company A is an industrial sensor manufacturer with 180 employees and annual revenue of KRW 42 billion (≈ US$31,423,000). 78% of its revenue came from OEM volume for two major corporations, so it faced price-cut pressure every year, and management considered launching its own-brand product sold directly to small and mid-sized manufacturers. Development costs alone were estimated at KRW 600 (≈ US$1) million, and the go/no-go decision had to be made within 8 weeks.
- The head of new business said, “Let’s just run a survey first,” but the CEO’s first question was “What decision will we make with this research?” They narrowed what they needed to learn to two things: whether to proceed, and the price ceiling.
- An assistant manager in strategic planning spent two weeks digging through association statistics and customs import data and estimated the domestic market at KRW 110 (≈ US$1) billion, growing 4% a year. The “KRW 300 billion (≈ US$224,450,100) market” long cited inside the company turned out to include overseas volume.
- What the 11 facility and purchasing managers said was not what we expected. "If the line stops for half a day, we lose tens of millions of won. Why would we care about saving a few thousand won per unit?" — their buying criterion was not price but response time when something breaks.
- The survey screened for actual decision-makers only and collected 214 responses. 62% said they would consider the product at KRW 180,000 (≈ US$135) or less per unit, and adding a same-day shipping guarantee raised that to 79%.
- Based on the findings, they cut excess features and reduced the development scope from KRW 600 million (≈ US$448,900) to KRW 320 million (≈ US$239,400). They ran a paid pilot at half the list price with 40 companies, and 11 of them moved on to full contracts.
- Nine months after launch, the company had 27 new customers and own-brand revenue of KRW 1.4 billion (≈ US$1,047,400). Dependence on OEM revenue fell from 78% to 64%, and the mood at the price negotiation table changed too.