Both market research and user research are important for the success of your product, but, as a product manager, you should be clear on how they differ from each other.
- Market research looks at market trends and consumer demographics.
- User research focuses more on how users feel about a product and how they would use it.
Market Research: This is about market trends, the user preferences, the demographics and what the people say they will buy. It focuses on what people say than what they do. Provides broad insights into the market and the business aspect of things. Generic in nature with guesstimates.
User Research: Focuses on what people feel on using a product or service, what they do and where they see a gap in the market. Provides insights on how a solution must be designed. Provides deep focused insights into the product. Here we would ask questions to a larger sample size and user base to delve deep into their needs and wants.
How are they related to each other?
Market research can be used to gather initial market sizing and get an idea of the price point of the product and what users might pay for it. From this place, you can delve into user research to get a more concrete idea of the product.
Market research deals with the macro aspects — market trends, segmentation, and what kind of product or service people are interested in. It focuses more on what people say than what they do. This kind of research provides broad business insights during the initial stages of product development.
User research deals with the micro aspects — the opinions people have about using a certain product and how they would want it to function. It serves to identify gaps in the problem space and draw relevant insights from user behaviour. User research focuses on the user’s needs.
| Market Research | User Research |
|---|---|
| Trends | Opinions & Behaviours |
| Macro aspects | Micro aspects |
| Broad insights | Deep focused insights |
| Generic in nature | Specific in nature |