Overview
A corporate strategy team in North America was considering entry into a new real estate services market. The internal case looked attractive: fragmentation, a path to share, and room to price. Before committing something on the order of $40M in build-out and go-to-market spend, the company needed an independent view of customer needs, competitive positioning, pricing, and what would actually block a new entrant.
Internal planning could describe the white space. It could not tell the team whether customers would switch, whether incumbents already owned the relationships that mattered, or whether pricing in the market would support the model. Those answers sat with competitors, brokers, operators, and buyers still in the category.
The team engaged Primary Insight to get structured access to executives from competing companies, customers, brokers, operators, and former industry leaders with direct market experience.
Challenge
The core challenge was not a lack of real estate research. It was a lack of independent, decision-grade perspective on a market the company did not yet operate in. Internal champions had every reason to describe the opportunity as open. Secondary sources could only go so far before the spend was committed.
Key open questions included:
What did customers actually buy, and what would make them change providers?
How were incumbents positioned on service, price, and relationships?
Did current pricing support the planned offer, or was the market tighter than the model assumed?
How fragmented was the market in practice, not on a slide?
Which barriers to entry were real, and which were just industry folklore?
A wrong go decision meant putting $40M into a market that was already defended.
Approach
Primary Insight custom-sourced people across several segments of the industry rather than repeating one type of former executive. Candidates were qualified for current or recent experience in the specific services market. Only then were they put in front of the strategy team.
The work ran as PI Calls built around customer needs, competitive position, pricing, fragmentation, and barriers. When the first conversations opened a sharper question around switching costs in one segment, sourcing continued until that point had a usable answer.
Outcome
The research gave the team an independent view of the opportunity. Some of the entry case still held. Customer switching was harder, and incumbent relationships were stickier, than the internal plan had assumed.
The strategy team recast the $40M market-entry plan around those constraints instead of treating the white space as empty.
