Ask HN: Is buying market research worth it? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is buying market research worth it?

4 pointsdnewcome5 comments

I was wondering if any of you have ever bought market analysis information from the big guys like Gartner or Forrester. Do you think that figures from established firms like this would make a big difference in one's business plan?

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I can't imagine how overpriced their services might be. For example, to read a recent story on "10 Reasons IT should Support iPhone" they charge some $739 (summarized & linked within: http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/04/13/forrester-to...).

Who knows what they charge for their "inside stuff." OTOH: Charlene Li worked there for some 8 years. They must have some sharp folks.

How to evaluate them/their offerings? That's a toughie.

Over the past 6 months I was working on my startup with a private equity investor. One of my consistent responsibilities was gathering market and industry data. Even though we could afford it, it was something we never paid for. My mentor/boss was always of the opinion that it all existed for free, and it was just a matter of finding it yourself. That said, market research is beyond valuable, but nothing is more important than customer development.

I haven't paid for research data, but just this weekend I used the free summaries given by some of the online market research firms to evaluate my current idea. For me that was all the data I needed to see that my idea was worth progressing with at least to the next stage.

Note: depending on the industry you're targeting, sometimes really valuable market analysis information can be found on websites of trade rags dedicated to that industry.

I do engage in some `re-quoting' usually. In other words, a trade journal may reference some statistics from a report and I'll just use that quote. I don't know if that is really a good thing to do though.

We once purchased estimated telecom subscriber data for many regions, then when we started to analyze it (growth rates, variances, etc) it turned out that the data was not as granular as expected - for example, growth rates were clearly estimated for several regions at once (i. e. all regions in the same macroregion had the same growth rate)

So make sure you're buying real data, not researcher's assumptions which you can assume yourself.

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