Market entry research: what it costs, and what it cannot tell you
If you are evaluating a new market, someone has already sent you a quote for an industry report. Two to five thousand dollars, a hundred-odd pages, five-year projections. Before you approve it, it is worth being precise about what that document can and cannot do for you.
What you are actually buying
The market research industry has two layers. A small number of firms produce original research, and a much larger number of aggregators resell it — the same report appears on a dozen sites with different covers. When you pay US$3,000, most of it is for analysis assembled from customs aggregates, company filings and trade association figures, plus a projection model.
That is genuinely useful for some decisions. If you need to justify a budget internally, size a category before committing capital, or understand regulatory structure and tariff regimes, a good report saves months.
The question it does not answer
A report tells you a category is worth US$7.4 billion and growing at 6% annually. Both figures may be exactly right. Neither tells you which companies to contact.
That gap matters more than it sounds. A market that looks large can be four distributors who will not take a new supplier. A market that looks unremarkable can have six thousand active buyers, most of them mid-sized manufacturers nobody is calling. The aggregate number cannot distinguish between those two situations, and they demand completely different strategies.
The relevant question for most exporters is not how big is this market. It is how many companies here already buy what I make, and can I reach them.
Skip the estimate, get the list
See how many companies actually import your product, right now. Check your product →
Two figures, side by side
| Industry report | Buyer list from customs records | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical price | US$2,000–5,000 | US$1,500 |
| Answers | How big, growing how fast, driven by what | Who buys it, where, how to reach them |
| Built from | Aggregates, filings, interviews, modelling | Customs declarations, company registers |
| Companies you can call | Usually none | Every row |
| Useful for | Investment cases, board approval | Building a pipeline |
These are not competing products. They answer different questions for different people, and a company entering a serious market often needs both. But they are frequently bought in the wrong order: the report gets approved because it looks like due diligence, and the contact list — the thing that actually produces revenue — never gets budgeted.
When the report is the right spend
Buy the report when the decision is whether to enter at all, when you need something a finance committee will accept, when the regulatory picture is genuinely unclear, or when you are looking at a category you do not already operate in.
If what you need is the structural picture of a specific market rather than a generic industry report, our sister project VS-Trade Intelligence builds that from official trade records for Mexico — narrower in scope than a global report, and grounded in declarations rather than projections.
When it is not
Skip it when you already make the product and already export it elsewhere. You do not need a projection to tell you the category exists — you are in it. What you need is the list of companies in the new market that clear your product through customs, and a way to contact them.
For that, the underlying data is public. Every import generates a customs declaration naming the importing company and the tariff code. Across Mexico, Brazil and Argentina that produces 282,369 companies with a working phone or email, indexed against 5,314 product codes. No projection, no model — a record that the shipment happened.
A test before you approve the invoice
Ask the vendor one question: how many companies in this market currently import HS [your code], and can I have five of their names?
If the answer is a market size, you are buying analysis. If it is a number and five names, you are buying a pipeline. Both have their place — just know which one you are paying for.
See the buyers for your product
Type your product or HS code and get the live count of importing companies in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina — how many are reachable, and how many started importing this year.
Check your product →