Market and competitor scans

The first professional research job of this course: the market scan — a structured read of who's out there, what they charge, and where the space is moving. Businesses pay for this work because decisions sit on it: pricing, positioning, whether to enter at all. The researcher desk turns it from a weekend of tabs into a disciplined hour, if you run it as a sequence instead of one giant question.

Scan 1 — the landscape. Open with the briefed survey: "direct-to-consumer [category], [geography], current players: who are the notable sellers, how do they position, what price ranges — each point sourced and dated." You're building the cast list, not judging yet. Expect gaps: small players are under-covered by public sources, and the scan tells you what the visible market looks like — say so downstream.

Scan 2 — the close reads. Pick the three most relevant names from the landscape and run each as its own question: "what does [player] sell, at what prices, through which channels; what do buyers praise and complain about — sourced." Separate runs pull each player's own best evidence instead of blending three companies into one paragraph. The complaints half is the underrated gold: competitors' weaknesses are your positioning material.

Scan 3 — the motion. Markets are films, not photos: "what changed in [category] over the last two years — pricing pressure, channel shifts, new entrants, exits? Recent sources only, flag anything pre-[year]." A landscape without motion reads as safer than it is; the motion scan is where "saturating" and "growing" stop being vibes and start carrying dates.

Package it or lose it. A scan that stays in chat history evaporates. Close with the synthesis ask: "compress the three scans into one page: landscape, three close reads, motion — every claim keeping its source and date." That page, filed with its date, is the deliverable — and next quarter's scan starts from it: "here's my scan from [date]; what changed?" Market research compounds exactly like a learning log.

Know the blind spots of public scanning. A sourced scan sees what publishes: funded players, loud marketers, review-heavy categories. It under-sees quiet incumbents, local competitors without an online footprint, and anything sold mostly through relationships. Carry that asymmetry into your conclusions explicitly — "visible market suggests X" — and patch the blind spots the analog way where the stakes deserve it: a fair walked, three customers asked, one competitor's product actually ordered. The desk accelerates research; it doesn't replace standing in the room.

One mistake to skip: scanning forever. Research has diminishing returns and a seductive feeling of productivity; the third hour of scanning is usually procrastination wearing a lab coat. The three-scan structure has a natural end — landscape, close reads, motion, package. When the page is written, the next move is a decision, not another scan; if you can't decide, the missing piece is almost never more market data.