Investors will want to know about prospects for your industry.
To get a big picture, start with industry surveys and analyses from investment houses and risk advisory services.
Use news from industry and trade associations to learn more about product lines within an industry.
Find benchmarks for firms in your industry with ratios and normscompiled by accountants and economists.
--from MIT Libraries
To understand the strengths and weaknesses of your idea, it will be helpful to learn about competitor firms and their products.
Use company directories to create lists of competitors by industry, product line, etc.
Search news archives for competitive intelligence.
Review patents to learn about features of competitors' products.
--from MIT Libraries
To understand the market for your new venture, you will need information about potential customers. These sources offer information about various customer bases:
Off-the-shelf reports from professional researchers
Consumer demographics and lifestyles
Business-to-business (B-to-B) markets can be compiled from company directories
Institutional markets, including governments
--from MIT Libraries
Is your product a niche product or an innovation? It may not be clear what industry you should research.
One strategy is to see if your product is classified by an industrial classification system.These systems organize and code products in numeric hierarchies.
Industry classification codes can be used to:
--from MIT Libraries
The size of a market and the share of this market held by competitors are key to assessing the competitive environment.
There is no single source of market size/market share data.
Market size/share information is usually pieced together from various sources.
--from MIT Libraries