I Built a Market Research Brief With Perplexity in One Sitting
No survey, no agency. Just a question, the sources it pulled, and a honest read of what the links actually said.
I needed to know if a niche had room for one more product. Instead of guessing, I asked Perplexity for the competitive landscape and made it cite every claim.
The output was a brief with links I could click, which is the entire point, I verified the size estimates against the original reports instead of trusting a summary. Two numbers didn't hold up.
Where it failed was synthesis, it listed players but didn't weigh them. I added the judgment: who's actually a threat, who's noise. The tool gathered; I decided, which is the correct division of labor.
For a first-pass brief, Perplexity beats a blank doc and a frantic search. It won't replace a real analyst, but it gets you 70% of the way before you spend a dollar on one.