How to Use ChatGPT for Market Research? (With Prompt + Examples)

The launch of generative ChatGPT indeed made AI accessible for all.

While the expertise of ChatGPT is still debatable, it can be a wonderful tool for getting a headstart on your market research.

ChatGPT can analyze zillion datasets and draw insights in the blink of an eye. It can study online databases and can make predictive analyses about almost anything.

Not using ChatGPT for market research would be a waste of an opportunity that stands right at your fingertip. We don’t want you to miss that.

So, let’s get you market research prompts for ChatGPT but before that.

Benefits of using ChatGPT for market research?

Check these benefits of using ChatGPT for market research, especially if you are doubtful and skeptical about how you could use it to gain a comprehensive understanding of the market

• Gives you a quick head start on market analysis by generating insights from large datasets.
• Offers a cost-effective alternative to traditional research methods.
• Saves a ton of time on manual collection and analysis methods.
• Offers a fresh stream of perspectives on different market research topics.
• Offers ease of use and requires no specialized skills.

The benefits are ample and even if you don’t rely on ChatGPT for your overall research, it’s a perfect tool to get started with research and gain some preliminary insights.

How to write effective ChatGPT prompts?

ChatGPT is a gem of a tool for market research. However, you won’t be satisfied with the precision of its answers by giving undefined prompts.

To make the best of this tool, here are a few things you should keep in mind while giving prompts:

1) Set clear expectations

ChatGPT is a trained generative AI model. The only way to get a drilled detailed response to your query is by specifying what you want.

For instance, do you want a detailed competitive overview of your business? Ask ChatGPT to offer a thorough overview of each competitor, their strengths, weaknesses, revenue, target market, and demographics instead of a simple list.

You can also assign a specific role to GPT to get relevant answers. This could be anything from analyzing like a seasoned market researcher to acting as a financial expert. When you assign a role, you ask GPT to offer reliable and expert answers.

2) Build a follow-up response.

The best way to get the most out of GPT's analytical and research ability is by building on an existing answer till you explore the detailed depths.

Will Yang, the head of growth and marketing at Instrumentl strongly recommends the process of iterative querying. He recommends starting with a broader question to get a general landscape before drilling down to specific prompts.

This step-by-step method not only refines data but also ensures a thorough understanding of the complexities within each market segment. It’s like having a conversation with a knowledgeable analyst who can pinpoint exactly what you must focus on, making the entire process efficient and much more insightful.

3) Feed data for effective response

Although ChatGPT can gather secondary data from the web, the credibility of such data is always questionable. If you want the data analysis to be factual and accurate, it’s better to feed ChatGPT with real data collected through surveys.

However, feeding the real data is just step one. To gather effective responses you need to play around with your prompts.

In conversation with Rahul Vij, the CEO of Webspero Solutions, we discovered how a minor specification to the prompt can make all the difference.

For instance, instead of asking ChatGPT to summarize the key concerns of customers, prompting it to summarize the key concerns of customers in the XYZ (i.e. 35-44)age group can make a whole lot of difference.

The response to the second query is expected to offer more insights and micro-understanding of customer sentiments than a general analytical prompt.

Remember, ChatGPT can do anything you want it to. You just need to learn to ask it rightfully.

That’s it. This is how you offer prompts to gather insightful and concluding research from ChatGPT. However, let’s now gather some practical insights by putting some prompts to use.

ChatGPT prompts for market research and analysis

Let’s take the fictional scenario of a gourmet bakery ‘SoulFlour’ in San Francisco to test different ChatGPT prompts for market research and analysis, and demonstrate how you can actually use ChatGPT for your own business.

1) Gather industry/market insights

Market research begins with getting a broad overview of your particular industry. While you can sift through documents and publications, a simple ChatGPT prompt is enough to gather a macro overview of your entire industry.

Taking the same gourmet bakery example, let’s see how a prompt can get you relevant data and insights.

The answer by ChatGPT is just enough to give you a headstart. The idea is to dig deeper, ask many follow-up questions (as we will demonstrate below), and gather a comprehensive understanding of target customers, market opportunities, competitive edge, and your market trends.

2) Develop market segmentation

While starting a new business or launching a new product, it’s critical to understand your product and services market segmentation. This will help you enhance your understanding of target customers and improve your product offerings.

Now, manual research can take up to hours and days. However, with ChatGPT you can gather valuable insights about your market segments in minutes and use it further for analysis.

All it takes is a simple prompt like this to get you started with market segmentation.

As you can see, a simple prompt helped you identify 4 potential market segments for your customers.

Health-conscious customers, though price-sensitive, could be your largest and most loyal base. On the other hand, you have high-income individuals who love indulging in high-priced coffees and then there are foodie enthusiasts who would give anything to experience new flavors and menus at least once.

These are just the insights that will further help you tailor your product and marketing strategies for different customer segments.

3) Generate buyer personas.

Market researchers can empathize with their target customers when they have a very innate understanding of their needs, wants, and preferences. This is where creating a buyer’s persona comes to your rescue.

A buyer’s persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer from each group(market segment). It outlines the demographics and psychographic details of your ideal customer telling you exactly where they reside, what their income is, how they spend, and why they need you.

Researchers can use this knowledge to tailor the marketing, product development, and customer service strategies.

Here’s a quick prompt that helped us generate a buyer’s persona for a gourmet bakery.

Prompt: Can you create a buyer's persona for my bakery in San Francisco highlighting the demographic and psychographic details of my potential customers?

ChatGPT crafted two buyers' personas—one for health-conscious Hannah and another for foodie Fred, giving you a thorough insight into their wants and pain points. While this might not perfectly represent your target audience, it can give you enough insight to understand what your customers might need.

You can further layer this question to gather specific insights like this.

Prompt: Analyze these customer preferences and behaviors to help me make an actionable marketing plan.

With this, you now understand that your(the bakery’s) regular customer base would be health-conscious individuals and busy professionals, while the foodie customer segment will visit very occasionally.

ChatGPT also generated an actionable marketing plan with specific examples to help you attract these customer segments. Even if you don’t intend to use this marketing plan as it is, you can use it as a reference or building point to organize your train of thought.

4) Gather competitor’s details

Knowing who you are competing against can help you devise strategies and USPs to make your business successful.

Now you can simply ask ChatGPT to identify top competitors and then build up on that answer. Or you can use this prompt to gather some thorough insights about your competitors.

Prompt: Analyze the competition for gourmet bakeries in San Francisco and give me a list of 5 top competitors. Create a table offering their brief overview and understanding of the target market, revenue, biggest strength, weakness, and market share. If possible, link the source to the data for me to verify it easily.

This table introduces your top competitors in San Francisco offering artisanal breads and gourmet exotic desserts. These bakeries have a strong marketplace already targeting the audience you want to capture.

It also highlights the weaknesses and strengths of these bakeries helping you draw your competitive advantage. However, you can dig further to gather specific key insights, like this.

Prompt: Can you gather data for Tartine Bakery and B. Patisserie pricing? An answer in the table form would be appreciated.

Well, you now have an insight into competitors’ pricing without hassling yourself in the process of data collection. Make sure to ask GPT for the source and verify the information yourself before using it to create your pricing plan. 

5) Leverage untapped opportunities

Now that you understand the competitive landscape of your business, it’s time to check if there are any untapped market opportunities for you to leverage.

Even if you have identified your competitive advantage, run a prompt and check if there are any missed opportunities you can consider taking advantage of.

Prompt: Identify the gaps in the current market offerings by these competitors and show me the opportunities I can leverage.

As you can see, despite the competition, the gourmet bakery industry lags in online delivery and health-centered offerings. You can focus on filling these market gaps to build your competitive advantage and unique presence in the market.

6) Analyze market trends

GPT can be used to make predictive analytics about your future marketplace.

You see industries are constantly evolving. Understanding the trend of customer behaviors and the future marketplace can assist you in developing products and services that will most definitely succeed.

Now, run a quick prompt to get a general understanding of market space, like this.

Prompt: Conduct a deep analysis of the bakery marketspace and tell me about its emerging trends in 2024.

As you can see, ChatGPT has offered a list of trends that will dominate the market space. Can you master all these trends? Absolutely, not.

However, these insights like protein-rich food, gut-friendly products, and sugar-conscious products can be incorporated while designing your product offerings.

You can also run a prompt to understand the trends your business should prioritize. This can specify your focus area for your business.

Prompt: Which of these trends should I prioritize considering my customer segment, bakery concept, and location?

Easy and insightful, right?

7) Create customer surveys

Another prominent way to use ChatGPT is to create questionnaires for your customer surveys. Surveys help gather direct feedback from the target audience on various aspects of products and services.

While designing surveys is a skilled job, ChatGPT does an equally wonderful and cost-effective job when prompted specifically. Even Logan Mallory, the VP of marketing at Motivosity, uses ChatGPT to design well-structured surveys with targeted questions to gather valuable insights.

Here’s a prompt we used to craft a quick survey questionnaire for the gourmet bakery.

Prompt: Create an insightful survey to gather essential details about my potential customers for a gourmet bakery in San Francisco. The survey should help me understand their dietary preferences, demographics, income levels, buying behavior, pricing perception, and value perceptions of my customers.

This is just a part of a questionnaire ChatGPT offered and honestly, it’s pretty comprehensive. So why struggle through the process and procrastinate when you can whip up your questionnaire in about a few seconds?

Modify the questionnaire, use it for the survey, and again use GPT to analyze the response and gather key insights.

Conduct market analysis and build your business plan

Is that all the ways you can use GPT for your market research? No.

All we did above was scratch the surface to show how proactive ChatGPT can be. Continue to dive deep and probe till you get the answers you need.

However, don’t rely heavily on ChatGPT. Simply use it to get a headstart and always use other sources to fact-check the data points.

Now, as you gather insights and analyze your market research, build a business plan translating the strategies and objectives of your business thoroughly.

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