Define the customer first
A market is not a single buyer. Choose a specific customer group and the situation in which they would need your offer. Describe the problem, who experiences it, who decides and who pays. This helps distinguish an interesting market from an accessible first opportunity.
Compare the alternatives
Research direct competitors, existing suppliers and the way customers solve the problem today. Include doing nothing. Business.gov.uk recommends examining customers, competitors, pricing and routes to market when testing an idea. Use that as a starting checklist, then focus on the questions that would change your decision.
Ask for evidence, not encouragement
Speak to people who resemble the intended customer. Ask about recent behaviour: what they bought, what triggered the decision and what made it difficult. Supportive reactions to a hypothetical offer do not establish demand. Separate what someone has done from what they say they might do.
Set a decision rule
Before gathering more information, decide what would justify a small test and what would make you pause. Record the evidence, its limitations and the next experiment. A short research brief with a clear decision can be more useful than a long market overview with no defined consequence.
Turn an assumption into a test.
For a fictional service business considering a new customer segment, the first research plan could look like this. The entries are questions to investigate, not market findings.
| Assumption | Evidence to seek | Decision it informs |
|---|---|---|
| The problem occurs often enough to matter. | Recent examples from representative prospective buyers. | Whether to test the offer with this segment. |
| Current alternatives leave a specific gap. | A comparison of competing offers and existing workarounds. | How to define the proposition. |
| The business can reach the buyer. | A bounded test of a proposed route to market. | Whether to invest further in that channel. |
Business.gov.uk identifies customer, competitor, pricing and route-to-market research as relevant to testing an idea. The sample test plan above is Tresswell’s application of those principles.
Write three assumptions that must be true for the market to be attractive. Design one low-cost test for the least certain assumption.
Further reading: Business.gov.uk: Testing and validating your business idea ↗. Accessed 8 November 2026.
External sources inform the points attributed to them. The practical application and examples are Tresswell’s interpretation. No endorsement is implied.
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