Why Market Research Exists (And What Product Teams Need From It Now)

Market research didn’t start as a department. It started as paying attention.

Somebody noticed which version of a product people picked up first.Somebody else caught the hesitation right after a price was mentioned.Then they made a change—and watched what happened next.

That was the essence of it: notice, understand, improve. Build something better because you actually saw what people did, not just what they said.

As businesses scaled, that proximity disappeared. You couldn’t be in the store or on the call with every customer. So we built systems to mimic it. Gallup made “public opinion” measurable. Nielsen made behavior trackable. Surveys, panels, segmentation frameworks—all ways to get the customer back into the room, at least in proxy.

For product teams, that was gold. Research brought discipline to discovery. It forced fresh eyes on assumptions. It gave PMs a sturdier defense than “gut feel” when pitching a roadmap call.

But somewhere between all that rigor and all those dashboards, something got lost.

Most teams I talk to aren’t short on data. They’ve got interviews. Metrics. Slice-and-dice dashboards. Maybe even a reel of customer quotes handy for the next deck.

And yet... decisions keep reopening. A feature that everyone “agreed” on suddenly expands.A launch slips sideways.A “final” bet quietly comes back for debate.

It’s not that research didn’t happen—it’s that it didn’t build conviction. The kind that holds up under pressure.

At some point, research became a box to tick. A checkpoint. A polite nod to “voice of customer.” We ask, “Did we do the research?” when we should be asking, “Will this hold when the stakes rise?”

And meanwhile, customers themselves changed. They’re not moving neatly down a funnel anymore. They experiment, compare, mix tools, publish their own takes. The edges of a category shift before the averages do.

If your insights mostly reflect the middle, you’re at risk of anchoring to where the market’s been—not where it’s going.

That’s where the idea of the Catalytic Customer comes in.

These are the users who live in the category. Not influencers or testers chasing novelty. People with enough skill, skin in the game, and curiosity to push a product to its edges—productively. They point out what isn’t working because they actually want it to.

They tend to see around corners. They represent what tomorrow’s “average” might look like.

When you involve them early, everything about the conversation sharpens.You stop arguing hypotheticals and start seeing the product under strain.You don’t collect “likes” or “dislikes”—you watch tradeoffs surface. You find out not just what people think, but where adoption might break.

That’s when research becomes more than validation—it becomes insurance. It gives decisions durability.

You still need quant data, of course. You still need to size opportunities and check that patterns scale. But when a roadmap call is on the line, “broad coverage” isn’t enough. You need clarity about risk.

Market research started with empathy and scaled through measurement. Now, for product teams, it needs to sharpen again—to help you find the customers who can test your thinking before the market does.

When that happens, research stops being a checkbox. It becomes a lever.