Market Research Report Structure

Match the report to the decision and available evidence. There is no required page count, chapter count, figure count, or output format. Omit irrelevant modules and expand methods/limitations when uncertainty is high.

Front matter

Title and scope

Include:

• market and geography;
• historical and forecast periods;
• retrieval cutoff;
• report version and classification;
• sponsor, author, and material conflicts;
• explicit statement that the report is not investment, legal, or financial advice.

Do not use logos, layouts, or wording that imply affiliation with another firm.

Executive synopsis

Write last. It should stand alone and contain:

1. decision context;
2. formal market boundary in one sentence;
3. highest-confidence findings with claim IDs;
4. top-down and bottom-up scenario range;
5. forecast scenario range and principal sensitivity;
6. material conflicts and limitations;
7. implications or options clearly labeled as judgment.

Never introduce a metric in the synopsis that is absent from the evidence and claims ledgers.

1. Scope and definitions

Define:

• product/service inclusion and exclusion;
• customer, payer, user, and transaction;
• value-chain level;
• geography, imports/exports, and channels;
• time basis and as-of date;
• measure, unit, and denominator;
• stock/flow and gross/net treatment;
• currency, base year, and nominal/real basis;
• industry and product classifications with versions;
• adjacent markets that are excluded.

Explain alternate plausible definitions and why one was selected. An industry classification is not automatically a product market or an antitrust market.

2. Evidence and methods

Describe:

• source hierarchy and search cutoff;
• original data producers and aggregator lineage;
• exact claim-source mapping;
• archived snapshots and revision handling;
• extraction, cleaning, joins, conversions, and calculations;
• source conflicts and reconciliation rules;
• confidence labels;
• primary-research methods and privacy controls;
• missing evidence and analysis deviations.

Summarize the source ledger by source type and revision status. Do not inflate source count by counting mirrors or derivative articles as independent.

3. Market size

Top-down

Show:

• control total and definition;
• disjoint components and coverage keys;
• in-scope fractions;
• channel/tax/trade adjustments;
• source IDs and limitations;
• resulting TAM scenarios.

Bottom-up

Show:

• population or installed base;
• customer segments;
• annual units or transactions;
• price/spend assumptions;
• addressable fractions;
• source and assumption IDs;
• resulting TAM scenarios.

SAM and SOM

For each scenario, state:

• serviceability filters;
• capture-share assumptions;
• time horizon;
• capacity, channel, sales-cycle, retention, and competition constraints;
• source evidence and analyst assumptions.

Present TAM/SAM/SOM as conditional scenarios. Do not select one estimate merely because it is the midpoint.

Reconciliation and sensitivity

Report:

• absolute and percentage gap between methods;
• definition, denominator, and coverage-key comparison;
• corrections for double counting;
• remaining unexplained difference;
• sensitivity to major counts, price, penetration, serviceability, and capture;
• switching values that change a decision.

4. Demand and customer evidence

Separate:

• official/administrative or transactional evidence;
• published survey evidence;
• original survey evidence;
• interview/focus-group themes;
• analyst interpretation.

For survey claims, include population, frame, sample method, mode, dates, unweighted sample, weighting, response/participation, wording, precision, and limitations. For interviews, include recruitment, consent, roles, mode, dates, coding, divergent views, and limits to generalization.

5. Market dynamics

For each driver or inhibitor:

• state the mechanism;
• identify observed evidence versus assumption;
• quantify only with a defensible calculation;
• define time horizon and leading indicators;
• include disconfirming evidence;
• state how it changes a scenario input.

Frameworks such as PESTLE or SWOT may organize questions but are not evidence. Use them only when useful, and do not force a fixed number of factors or scores.

6. Competitive landscape

Scope

Define the product and geographic basis from the customer perspective. Consider substitutability, non-price dimensions, channels, imports, digital/multi-sided features, innovation, and dynamic change where relevant.

Competitor set

State inclusion rules. Distinguish:

• current direct competitors;
• adjacent/substitute providers;
• potential entrants;
• channel partners or suppliers;
• unknown/private participants.

Feature and positioning evidence

Use the validated matrix with product edition, geography, date, status, and source IDs. Publish scoring rules for any positioning map. Use unknown when evidence is absent.

Shares and concentration

State numerator and denominator, metric, period, coverage, residual share, and alternate definitions. Treat HHI/CRn as descriptive screens. Do not make legal antitrust conclusions.

7. Forecast scenarios

Historical basis

Show series IDs, units, frequency, seasonal adjustment, revisions, taxonomy breaks, transformations, and vintage.

Scenario design

For each named scenario, document:

• annual rate path or driver equations;
• demand, price, supply, regulation, competition, and capacity assumptions;
• evidence and assumption IDs;
• constraints and internal consistency;
• conditions that would make the scenario obsolete.

Do not assign probabilities without a defensible probabilistic model. Do not call scenario bounds confidence or prediction intervals.

Sensitivity

Report endpoints under stated input shifts, rank influential assumptions, and identify decision thresholds. If interactions matter, add coherent combined scenarios rather than relying only on one-way sensitivity.

8. Regulation and policy

Use primary regulator and legal sources. Record:

• jurisdiction and authority;
• instrument or docket identifier;
• publication, adoption, and effective dates;
• enacted/proposed/stayed/repealed status;
• affected products and entities;
• evidence-backed market mechanism;
• uncertainty and need for legal review.

Do not present a policy proposal as effective law or compliance interpretation as legal advice.

9. Risks, implications, and options

Separate:

• observed risk indicator;
• likelihood judgment;
• impact mechanism;
• exposure and time horizon;
• early-warning measure;
• mitigation or option;
• residual uncertainty.

Tie recommendations to explicit objectives and findings. Include dependencies, trade-offs, owner, timing, and evidence that would trigger revision. A recommendation is judgment, not a sourced fact.

10. Limitations

Consolidate:

• data gaps and source conflicts;
• paid or inaccessible evidence not verified;
• classification and scope mismatch;
• currency/base-year and conversion limits;
• stock/flow or denominator uncertainty;
• revisions and historical breaks;
• imputation, suppression, survey, and interview limitations;
• competitor evidence gaps;
• forecast/model uncertainty;
• sponsor and analyst conflicts.

Appendices

Include as needed:

• source/evidence ledger;
• claims ledger;
• calculation and assumption register;
• unit/currency/base-year conversion table;
• market-sizing inputs and outputs;
• forecast and sensitivity inputs and outputs;
• competitor-feature matrix;
• survey instrument and methodology disclosure;
• interview guide and de-identified coding framework;
• revision log;
• machine-readable local files.

Release gate

• Scope and denominator are explicit and consistent.
• Every factual or quantitative claim maps to source IDs.
• Calculations map to inputs and assumptions.
• Publication/retrieval dates and revisions are recorded.
• Monetary values identify currency, base year, and price basis.
• Stock/flow, units, taxonomy, and denominator are explicit.
• Top-down/bottom-up methods are reconciled without double counting.
• TAM/SAM/SOM and forecasts are conditional scenarios with sensitivity.
• Survey and interview evidence carries full method and privacy disclosures.
• Competitor evidence is lawful, dated, and does not infer no from unknown.
• Conflicts and limitations remain visible.
• No unsupported paid-market figures, fabricated citations, PII, trade secrets, deceptive collection, brand impersonation, or investment-advice framing.