Two products appear to compete. Do customers actually treat them as alternatives?
A company forecasts rapid expansion. What would have to change in purchasing behavior for that forecast to hold?
A proposed transaction promises operating efficiencies. Where would those savings come from, and what would achieving them require?
MuirMed supports economic and commercial consulting teams with focused industry investigation, customer research, and analysis of business assumptions. Each assignment connects a defined question to the engagement’s broader conclusion.
Competition and market structure
The way a company describes its competitors may differ from the way customers make decisions.
A software provider might name three companies offering similar features. Its customers may instead choose between buying software, using an existing internal process, hiring someone, or leaving the problem unresolved. Understanding those alternatives can materially change the interpretation of the market.
Research support for competition and transaction engagements can examine:
- Which products customers consider credible alternatives.
- What distinguishes different customer groups and use cases.
- Who participates in purchasing decisions and what determines the outcome.
- How difficult it is to switch providers.
- Whether contracts, training, integration, data migration, or established relationships affect switching.
- What evidence supports a company’s claimed differentiation.
- Which practical barriers a new competitor would have to overcome.
Research can involve studying products, interviewing market participants, reviewing purchasing information, examining company documents, and organizing findings for the economic team.
The deliverable should make the evidence usable: a supported account of how competition occurs, where customer behavior varies, and which assumptions require further testing. Formal market definition and quantitative competition analysis remain assigned to the appropriate members of the engagement team.
Market entry, demand, and expansion
A large potential market does not establish that a particular business can reach it.
Market-entry research establishes who has the problem, how they currently address it, what would motivate them to change, and what the proposed offering asks them to spend or give up.
The investigation examines:
- The customer groups with the clearest need.
- The difference between interest and willingness to purchase.
- Existing alternatives and the reasons customers choose them.
- Distribution, procurement, and implementation requirements.
- The sales process and the people who can delay or prevent a purchase.
- Whether demand depends on conditions the company cannot control.
- What assumptions explain the gap between today’s business and the proposed forecast.
For an established business, the assignment might be narrower: examining why growth has slowed, whether a proposed customer segment is genuinely different, or whether experience in one market can reasonably be extended to another.
Potential outputs include a market-entry assessment, customer-segment profiles, a competitor comparison, a map of the purchasing process, and a recommendation about where further investigation or testing is warranted.
Pricing and the economics of customer behavior
A pricing decision depends on understanding what customers value and what alternatives they perceive.
Customer research examines why people choose an offering, which features influence that choice, how usage differs across segments, and what creates resistance to paying more.
For a subscription business, for example, the relevant question might be whether customers purchase access to a feature, confidence that a task will be handled, or relief from a larger operational burden. Those are different sources of value, with different implications for packaging and communication.
Research can help establish:
- Which benefits matter to which customers.
- Whether the payer and the end user value the same things.
- Where customers encounter costs beyond the listed price.
- What customers would do if the product became more expensive.
- Which proposed pricing changes deserve testing.
- What information a quantitative pricing analysis needs to represent the business accurately.
Demand estimation, econometrics, and formal pricing models are handled in collaboration with team members who bring the required methodological expertise.
Commercial disputes and business assumptions
A dispute may turn on competing explanations of what a business would have done, what an agreement was expected to produce, or why performance changed.
Commercial investigation tests those explanations against the product, the industry, contemporaneous information, and the way the business operated.
A scoped assignment can involve building an industry background memorandum, examining a claimed source of competitive advantage, reviewing the commercial assumptions behind a forecast, or organizing evidence relevant to a specialist’s analysis.
The objective is to give the engagement team a clear account of what the available information supports, where it conflicts, and which questions remain open. Expert economic opinions, damages calculations, and testimony require their own qualifications and responsibilities.
A defined question. Accountable execution.
Each assignment begins with the question the team needs to resolve, its relevance to the engagement, and the intended use of the findings. Scope and deliverables are agreed before the investigation begins.
Deliverables can include an investigation plan, interview guides, company and industry research, evidence summaries, assumptions logs, and a presentation of findings. Conclusions should be traceable to their supporting material, and uncertainty should be stated where it affects the interpretation.
Assignments can span industries. Healthcare engagements draw directly on clinical knowledge. Work in other fields begins with studying their mechanics and testing the emerging explanation against evidence and the experience of people who know the business.
Discuss the business question your engagement needs to resolve.