How to choose: AI Market Research Tools

How to choose in five minutes

1. Write down the deliverable. A market size for a deck is desk research. “Why do customers churn?” is primary research. “Tell me when a competitor changes pricing” is competitive intelligence.
2. Decide how much accuracy matters. For an internal brainstorm, any chat tool will do. For a client deliverable or an investment memo, use a tool that checks citations, and still spot-check the figures that matter most.
3. Check where the data comes from. Open-web tools can’t read paywalled reports. If you need broker research, pay for AlphaSense. If you need government statistics, use a tool that queries them directly.
4. Run one real question through two tools. Use a question you already know the answer to, and count how many figures trace back to a source.
5. Price it per deliverable, not per seat. A $20 a month chat plan is cheap until an analyst spends a day fixing its numbers.

Continue this reading path

• Run a one-week tool pilot
• What it costs
• Resource directory

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