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Hi there,

Our product is a cloud based application available cross platform. It's functionality, summed up, is too help you share the books you read with your friends.

We are in the stages of Market Research but I personally do not know where to start my Desk Research. I know I can look at our competition on App stores but to be honest I am not sure where to go next.

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A market research about SaaS solely as a concept would be as useful as a molecular analysis of distilled water. Specify your question further, please. – Tom Sep 20 '12 at 8:32
First: share your idea. I mean not necessarily here, but find "startup" communities or possible customers to share your idea with. Also if you would share it here you would get some answers. – Torsten Sep 20 '12 at 8:36
Updated, thanks for the feedback – MaxWillmo Sep 20 '12 at 8:45
is there a need for this? What does it do that facebook or twitter or amazon don't do? – TimJ♦ Sep 20 '12 at 14:07
The idea is not the issue here. I am more concerned about how to conduct market research on the software industry. – MaxWillmo Sep 20 '12 at 16:26

1 Answer

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The main function you are offering is social by nature. Users can already do that using generic social network (e.g. facebook). I would start with two things:

  • Qualitative Research - find people who have shared books on facebook (or other networks) and try to understand what's their motivation in doing this, when are they doing this, where, with what books and what friends. I would try to do that with a few dozens of people and try to identify patterns and groups that behave the same.
  • Quantitative Research - Try to measure how many people are already doing that as percentage of people who read books and are active on facebook. I would also try to compare with how much people are sharing other paid content (like songs or movies).

The first part will give you a great insight on how to focus your product and the second part will allow you to start assessing how big the market is. You can probably say that people will be more likely to share on a dedicated network or with a dedicated tool but it's probably a 2x rather than a 10x of what people are already doing today.

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