Use the Internet: everyone else does, so that’s where you need to start. You can get a good, basic idea of the possible market for your invention (including potential competition) by trawling the web for articles and news items. Start by keying a description of your invention into a major search engine – and keep a notebook handy! The internet is amazing, it can really provide help.
Go shopping. Eventually (you hope) your invention is going to grace the shelves of some pretty major retailers. So go find out what they’ve got in their stores already. Take a trip to shops that sell the kinds of things you are making. What are they selling? What does well? How is it packaged? Who is buying it? If you don’t know where to sell your invention, you’re lost already.
Review market reports: you’ll need to employ someone to do this, unless you happen to be a marketing genius as well as an inventor. What you need is a series of market reports and evidence of data trends that will be able to direct the final market placement of your item. Find out what age groups, what sexes and what income levels are buying the kind of thing you have made.
Ask. One of the most useful tools in the market research business is the simple questionnaire. Get out there and get people to fill out a questionnaire – not just about your product specifically, but about your type of product. Their answers will help define the kinds of people who like what you are making – and that’s your market as you can read from https://www.companionlink.com/blog/2021/12/the-benefits-of-patent-services-from-inventhelp-experts/.
Do a sample day. Get out into a mall or shopping center and get people to try your product for real. Their input is invaluable – the customer is the ultimate market researcher, because the customer is the market. And when the customer is using your product for real, you can see your market forming right in front of you.
Identify the main points of your invention’s market entry: cost, placement and longevity. Is your invention a use once and buy again item, like a soft drink; or a keeper? Is it a high end item, placed for a wealthy market – or a low cost item designed to attract customers? Your market is dictated by these things, so get to know them better than you know yourself.
Get yourself advertised at. Your market research needs to identify the advertising angles that your invention will exploit. Once you have identified your market, then, you need to work out where that market goes to get its consumer information. Trawl the airwaves, get back online and look at what they are looking at.
Listen. It’s all very well doing market research for a product – but only if you listen to what that research is telling you. Your invention might not work in the market you wanted it to. If you don’t listen, you won’t know.
React. If your invention doesn’t work in the market you thought you had identified for it, what use are you going to make of your market research? Sometimes, market research tells you more than just where a product can be sold: it tells you why it can’t, and offers you the chance to change it. Use your market research to make your product better.
Join ‘em, then beat ‘em. Use the competition – buy their products, find out what could be better about them, and then make sure your invention hits those nails on the head. The best market research of all is consuming your own market.
If you found this useful go to How do you patent an idea with InventHelp article for more tips, tools and secrets of the trade.