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Market Research for Small Business: A Study With Real Data

By Daniel Derzic, founder of Adlicio · Oct 30, 2026 · 14 min read

On this page

• What we found
• What the comment research found for three online products
• Step 1: Write down five questions before you collect
• Step 2: Go where buyers already talk
• Step 3: Code the comments, then decide
• What a paid survey on the same five questions costs in 2026
• Market research for a local or service business
• Free market research tools that still work (checked September 24, 2026)
• What every guide agrees on
• How we got this data
• FAQ

Market research for a small business is finding out who buys, what they pay, what they want and what current products get wrong before you spend on a launch. The top-ranking guides describe methods but none shows a study on real data, so we answered five questions from public comments for three products you could sell online (a protein bar, dog joint chews and a vitamin C serum), then priced the same questions on paid survey panels.

What we found

• ✓Reading 1,362 public comments answered five launch questions for three products in about 3 hours of reading.
• ✓Price was the top serum topic: 88 of 499 comments mention it, and 46 name a cheaper option.
• ✓In 236 low-star reviews of one dog joint chew, 80 say the dog will not eat it.
• ✓A paid survey of 200 people starts at $110 to $430 on four self-serve sites.
• ✓Of the 51 resources the top guides recommend, 34 still work and 4 are dead.
• ✓In three Ohio counties, 85% to 100% of beauty salons have no employees.

What the comment research found for three online products

Each number counts comments, not people: "senior dog 49" means 49 of the 370 dog chew comments mention a senior dog. "Rough" marks a count our coding check could not confirm. Start with the biggest count in each column.

Reading all 1,362 comments by hand takes about 3 hours (181 minutes, estimated) and costs nothing once you have the comments. We collected them with paid data requests and an AI-assisted coding pass, which took 11.9 minutes: 7.7 to collect, 4.2 to code. The paid steps only bought speed.

Many comments are over a year old, so use these counts to rank what to test, never as market shares.

Step 1: Write down five questions before you collect

Write these down first, with the decision each one feeds:

1. ✓Who talks about it? Your first ad audience. Comments show who speaks up, not who buys.
2. ✓What do they say about price? Your price and its anchor.
3. ✓What do they want and cannot find? A line, a size or a bundle.
4. ✓What do current products get wrong? Your difference.
5. ✓Which words do they use? Your headlines and hooks.

Step 2: Go where buyers already talk

We searched Reddit, TikTok, YouTube and Amazon with plain queries such as "best protein bar" and read the busiest threads, videos and best-selling listings. The method to find customer pain points on Reddit covers how to pick threads.

Expect noise: 495 of the 1,362 comments were not about the product.

The r/startups thread "How do I conduct market research?", which ranks first for this search, was started in 2019 by a student with a protein bar idea: "I have searched everywhere for something similar like this and I havent found any product alike." On September 23, 2026, Amazon's search for protein bar reported 3,536 products; Pure Protein showed 15,949 ratings and "40K+ bought in past month", Quest 20,713 ratings and "30K+ bought in past month". Search where buyers shop, not only Google.

The one-tool route: one listing, 388 reviews

The thinnest answer in the study was question 4 for dog chews: only 7 of 370 comments mention a dog refusing a chew, and 11 mention no effect. So we made one Adlicio pull on one best-selling joint chew listing (6,974 ratings, 1,868 written reviews). The "top reviews" Amazon shows for it, our study route, held 8 reviews, 2 of them at 1 to 3 stars. The pull took about 10 minutes and returned 388 reviews, all US, from March 2024 to September 2026, with 236 at 1 to 3 stars.

Two low-star reviews cannot tell you why a chew fails; 236 can, and the guide to mine Amazon reviews for ad angles shows how to read them. Reading the 388 by hand would take about 97 minutes (estimated). Every count below is rough:

A 3-star reviewer: "I'm sure the supplement works great but it's not going to do anything if my dog won't eat it." For a new chew, taste and freshness are the first gap, then a trial size and clear return terms.

Adlicio pulls verbatim customer comments and reviews from public pages on Reddit, Amazon, YouTube, TikTok and other platforms and groups them into pains, objections, desired outcomes and phrases. See voice of customer research for how that works.

Step 3: Code the comments, then decide

Write the codes before you count, one set per question: uses or jobs, price complaints and cheaper switches, stated wants ("I wish", "please make"), product problems, and outcome words. A comment can take several codes. Code what the comment says, not what the video says, and health effects only as customer statements. To keep counts and quotes in one sheet, a voice of customer template gives you the columns.

If you were launching one, test these first:

• ✓"I can't for the life of me get over the texture. Like eating a wet sand castle." (Reddit)
• ✓"When should we start the joint supplement? My husky is turning 3 should we get started already???" (TikTok)
• ✓"I need some guidance on dosage amounts. I feel like each company has their own dosage suggestions and I have no idea how I know if I am giving too much or not enough." (YouTube)
• ✓"Vichy Vitamin C serum is a dupe for Skinceuticals…both owned by L'Oréal. Vichy around $40 compared to nearly 200" (TikTok)
• ✓"how do you stop your face turning orange? vit c serums all turn orange on my face and makes me look like I have a bad fake tan" (YouTube)

What a paid survey on the same five questions costs in 2026

A panel counts strangers who pass a screener, such as how many would pay $30; comments give you reasons and words. For 200 US completes, 10 questions and 1 screener for the target buyer, public pricing pages showed these "starting at" floors on September 24, 2026:

Qualtrics, AYTM and Attest show no public dollar price ("Request Pricing", "Let's Chat", "Talk to sales"). So 200 answers from strangers start at $110 to $430 on four self-serve sites, and full service starts at $5,000. Two top-ranking guides quote more on weaker sources: Salesforce's guide gives $4,000 to $6,000 per focus group and $15,000 to $35,000 on consumer research, citing a January 2018 research-firm PDF that returned 404 on September 23 and 24, 2026, and Xero's guide says "$5,000 to $30,000 or more" with no source.

Market research for a local or service business

A salon or a plumber has no Amazon listing, but government counts show how crowded the market is, and low-star Google reviews answer question 4. The U.S. Census Bureau ran this count for a hair salon in its 2014 deck "Business by the Numbers"; here are current numbers for beauty salons in three Ohio counties.

Sources: County Business Patterns 2023, Nonemployer Statistics 2023 and 2024 population estimates, free with no sign-up. County Business Patterns counts only salons with payroll, but 85% to 100% of these salons have no employees, so one file alone misses most of the field.

We also pulled every 1 to 3 star Google review of three salons in one small Ohio town, two chain locations and one independent: 61 had text. Treat it as a worked example, not a finding about salons. The top complaint is a result that was not what they asked for (36), then a stylist who did not listen (16), rude staff (14), price or fees (10), booking or cancellation policy (9) and waiting (8).

"Stylist was in a hurry and did not listen to what I wanted," wrote one chain-salon reviewer. The independent salon drew 7 of the 9 booking complaints; its reviewers mention cancellation fees and front-desk manners. A new salon should sell the consultation (bring a photo, confirm the length before the first cut) and write a clear booking policy. You can export Google reviews of local competitors to run the same count.

Free market research tools that still work (checked September 24, 2026)

We checked all 51 resources the top-ranking guides and Google's AI overview recommend: 34 work, 4 are dead, 2 have moved, 3 are stale, 5 need a library card or login and 3 blocked our checks. Open a link before you plan around it. Free ones that loaded: data.census.gov, County Business Patterns, Census Business Builder, the BLS Consumer Expenditure Surveys, Google Trends (an index, not search volume) and Google Forms.

"Google Surveys and Surveys 360 are no longer available as of November 1, 2022" (Google), yet a resource list dated May 2026 still recommends Google Consumer Surveys. CensusViewer redirects to an unrelated sports site, focusloop.io does not resolve, Census Business Builder's old address (cbb.census.gov/sbe/) returns 404, and SCORE's focus group guide shows SCORE's own 404 page.

The Census Bureau "terminated the collection of data for the Statistical Compendia program effective October 1, 2011" (Census), so its Statistical Abstract and State and Metropolitan Area Data Book are stale; the newest U.S. Industry and Trade Outlook we found is from 2000. IBISWorld, Statista, Business Source Complete, Lexis+ and Data Axle need a library card or login, and Moody's economic indicators, D&B Hoovers and Census QuickFacts blocked our checks.

None of these lists points to public comments, where our answers came from. Our Reddit market research guide covers the forum side.

What every guide agrees on

Seven of the eight top-ranking pages define market research as collecting facts about customers, competitors and the market so you decide with less risk, through primary research (surveys, interviews, focus groups) or secondary research (government data, industry reports). Four list mistakes to avoid, such as leading questions and small or biased samples, and two say not to survey friends and family. An r/startups commenter put it best: "if you ask them to approve of your idea, they probably will, and you've learned nothing."

How we got this data

We collected the comments on September 23, 2026. Per product we read the first page (about 25 comments) of the 2 to 4 Reddit threads with the most comments, the first 20 comments on the 2 most-commented TikTok videos, the top 100 comments by relevance on 3 to 7 high-view YouTube review videos, and the 8 top reviews on the 2 best-selling Amazon listings. YouTube supplied 1,026 of the 1,362 comments (75%). Relevance picks skew older: comments run from October 2012 to September 2026, the median is about 13 months old (403.5 days), and 590 were posted in the 12 months before collection.

An AI model coded every comment against a codebook written before counting. A second model from another vendor coded 50 random comments per product blind: the two chose exactly the same codes on 99 of 150 and agreed on what was on-topic for 137 of 150, with Cohen's kappa (agreement beyond chance, where 1 is perfect) of 0.88 for protein bars, 0.87 for dog chews and 0.63 for vitamin C. No person hand-checked the coding. A count is "rough" when its code had fewer than 4 hits in the product's 50-comment check sample or its kappa fell under 0.6. We dropped one vitamin C count (form and formula talk, kappa 0.13).

Reading time assumes 43,074 words at 238 words per minute, the average adult silent reading rate for non-fiction (Brysbaert, 2019). Hand coding was not measured.

The one-tool route pulled this listing, also the source of the review quote, with our own review tool on September 24, 2026. It returns up to about 100 reviews per star level, so its star mix is not the listing's. One AI coder read the 236 low-star reviews, with a keyword cross-check.

Tool links got a plain web request, then a real browser where refused. Salons are NAICS code 812112; the three reviewed salons have the most Google reviews near one Ohio town, with low-star reviews about 3 weeks to 8 years old.

Limits: the sample is not random and includes non-US commenters. The local example covers one industry, one state and three counties, and nonemployer counts include part-time sole proprietors.

FAQ

How do I do market research for a small business?

Follow the steps above: write down five questions, collect public comments and reviews, code them and turn each answer into a test.

What are the 5 C's of marketing analysis?

Company, Customers, Competitors, Collaborators and Context. The five questions here cover customers and competitors.

How much does market research cost in 2026?

From nothing for reading public comments yourself, to $110 to $430 for 200 self-serve survey completes, to $5,000 and up for a full-service project. In 2019 a commenter in the r/startups thread put a paid firm at "~$3k+".

Can I trust Reddit, TikTok and YouTube comments for market research?

For reasons and words, yes. For market shares, no. Report "49 of 370 comments mention", never a percent of customers.

Pick one product question this week, read 300 comments about it and write the count next to the question before you decide anything.