SD-5 Market ResearchThe purpose of this document is to provide DoD and other Federal personnel involved in the acquisition process with practical guidance on using market research to ensure the acquisition of products and services that will best serve the government??s needs. Specifically, this document is designed for personnel involved with establishing requirements for products or services, such as engineers, technical specialists, project officers, and customers; personnel involved with purchasing products or services, such as contracting officers, contract specialists, and cost analysts; and personnel who support the acquisition process, such as logisticians, testing and quality assurance specialists, and legal counsel.

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•  Market research team members or individual who prepared the report

•  Companies contacted, questions asked, summary of information provided, test results, and evaluation of products or services

•  Market developments, broken out into specific areas if desired (for example, each team member could have a section related to his or her specific area of research)

•  Impact of the findings on the Federal Government

•  Recommended actions based on research findings, for example,

e  investigate a new manufacturing technology to determine its applicability to govern- ment acquisitions,

e  identify production issues that might affect future government needs,

e  train government personnel in a new commercial quality assurance process, or

e  alert other stakeholders to issues or new developments.

•  Actions completed in response to the market research findings.

Commercial markets are often fast paced and evolve rapidly. Using a structured approach to collect and document strategic market research results will enable DoD to gain the most benefit from commercial markets.

Tactical Market Research (Market Investigation)

Tactical market research involves activities that result in an in-depth understanding of a market. Tactical market research is conducted during an acquisition process to answer specific questions about the market, suppliers, products, services, and so on in order to shape the acquisition strat- egy.Tactical market research builds on the results of ongoing strategic market research, using those findings to help identify targets for more in-depth research.

The tactical market research process has seven steps, as shown in Figure 5. Each step is dis- cussed below.

Summarize Strategic Market Research

Part of the value of strategic market research is that you are better prepared to do an efficient tactical market investigation in the limited time you have when faced with an acquisition.The first part of a market investigation is to review and summarize what you already know from your strategic market research. In this part of market investigation, good documentation of your strategic market research pays dividends in time and cost savings. Considering your previous findings, you can now target the tactical market research to answer specific questions and to fill in gaps in information. Also, communicating requirements to industry is integral to conducting