By now you’ve spent some time and money on your invention idea. Before you start spending the big bucks, don’t you want to make sure that your product will sell? Welcome to the third part of our 10-part series, conducting market research to make sure your product will sell, and that it will sell for more than you cost it to make it.

Like some other expenditures, market research is something that if you spend money early, you can save yourself TONS of money down the road. Market research is also something all serious, business-minded inventors need to do before going any further.

Unfortunately, too many inventors skip this step because they know in their gut that “this idea will make millions,” only to spend lots of money and find out people won’t buy their product. Or maybe people will buy your product for $5.99 when it costs you $7.85 to design, manufacture, and ship it. Ask how you can estimate the manufacturing cost of your invention.

Be a smart, business-minded inventor, do your market research on your potential product to find out if you’re going forward with the right one. Think of it this way, if it turns out maybe this isn’t the right product, then you’ve save yourself years of trouble, tens of thousands of dollars, and you can always move onto one of your other ideas!

One question we get: why do we recommend market research after the provisional patent but before the utility patent? That’s because market research costs more than a provisional patent, but costs less than a utility patent. The goal is to spend the least amount of money to try to find out WHY YOU SHOULDN’T invent this product. So say the patent search, or an earlier step finds your exact design is owned by someone else. Well then you haven’t paid thousands of dollars for market research and the utility patent. Believe me, that’s a good thing that save you time & money in the long run. Maybe you find out in market research that people don’t like your product, well good thing you haven’t spent $5000-10000 applying for a patent. Each step of the way, you spend more money, spend it wisely, and gain more confidence if your product passes the test.

Now onto market research. We could talk days about different types of market research, but this is 5-minute inventing so we’ll hit the highlights. There are really two types of research you need to conduct: primary and secondary market research.

Primary market research consists of you asking consumers questions about your product or about their buying habits. You can conduct consumer surveys using a third party such as our partner inventwise. You can save yourself some dough by doing market research yourself. One inventor I talked to recommended every inventor do the following:

• Setup a table in front of your local grocery store (with their permission)
• Tell people passing buy your conducting research for a friend’s invention (so it’s easier for them to be honest about what they think) and ask them the following questions
• Would you buy this?
• If yes, yow much would you pay?
• What would you do to improve it?
• Make notes about the person - age, gender, ethnicity, etc.

Helpful Note: When talking to others about your product, it’s helpful to have a rough prototype so they can at least get a feel. It doesn’t have to be something fancy; you can build it yourself using materials from Home Depot.

Ask marketing guru, Jeff Dobkin, other ways to get creative with primary market research. Primary market research will also come in handy when trying to prove your product to potential licensees or retailers.

Next, you need to do some secondary market research. This consists of finding out determine about your industry through online research, trade journals, competitors, etc. You want to the size of your market (no, it’s not everyone), who are other players in your market, the demographics of your market (male/female, etc.), competing product and prices, research conducted about market trends. Jeff has written a very in depth article about estimating market size for inventions. Just remember to take notes so you can track down this information later.

Remember the key is to find out if people will 1) buy your product and 2) buy your product for more than it cost you to make it. The more of this data the have, the more you can prove to others that you have a viable, marketable product that will make a profit.

Learn about market research from other inventors.

Next, we’ll talk more about getting your idea into physical form - a prototype.

To Be Continued…

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