---
name: market-landscape-scan
description: >-
  Market Landscape Scan: map a market's segments, players, substitutes, and whitespace
  with cited evidence. Use when entering or re-evaluating a market before sizing,
  positioning, or picking competitors to study.
slug: market-landscape-scan
version: 1.1.1
displayName: market-landscape-scan
---

# Market Landscape Scan

## Purpose

Map a market's structure using a workflow, not a one-shot answer: **search plan → segmentation →
player mapping → dynamics → whitespace → next-step options.** The output is the landscape view that
everything downstream stands on — sizing needs to know the segments, positioning needs to know the
players, and competitor deep-dives need to know who's worth the effort. This skill maps structure,
not magnitude: it tells you who plays where and why, not how big the prize is.

## Input

**Works best with:** the market, segment, or problem space to map — in your words, not an analyst
category — and **the decision this landscape should support** (market entry, new product line,
re-positioning, build-vs-buy).
**Also useful:** any boundary narrower than global — geography, buyer size, price band — and players
you already know about, so the scan spends its effort on what you don't.

Input supplied inline with the invocation — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an
appended `ARGUMENTS:` line — counts as answers already given. Use it against the question budget;
don't re-ask.

**Arriving empty-handed? That works too.** The skill opens with at most 3 questions (market, decision,
boundary) and proceeds on labeled assumptions if they go unanswered — that's the
`autonomous-investigation` contract.

**Example invocation:** `Run a market landscape scan on developer-facing API observability tools,
EU-only — this supports a Q4 market-entry decision.`

## Key Concepts

- **Governing protocol:** this skill honors the [`autonomous-investigation`](../autonomous-investigation/SKILL.md)
  contract — question budget of 3, search-plan gate, Fact/Inference/Assumption labels, Just Enough
  Mode, stable schema, 4-option Final Step.
- **Discipline mix:** primarily OSINT (analyst and review coverage, press, communities) with
  GEOINT/DEMOINT for segment reality-checks and FININT for funding signals — see
  [`intelligence-collection-disciplines`](../intelligence-collection-disciplines/SKILL.md).
- **Buyer-view segmentation.** Map the market as *buyers* experience it, not as vendors or analysts
  carve it — and note where the two disagree. Analyst quadrants are a map someone else drew for their
  own purposes; the disagreement between vendor categories and buyer reality is often where the
  opportunity hides.
- **Non-consumption is a competitor.** "They use spreadsheets" belongs on the player map. Treating
  substitutes and non-consumption as competitors is the most commercially useful habit in market
  analysis — the biggest rival is usually the status quo, and it never shows up in a quadrant.
- **The dead-zone test.** Every whitespace claim must survive the question *"or is it a dead zone?"*
  Empty space is either opportunity or evidence of no demand; the honest counter-reading is mandatory,
  not optional.
- **Do-not-invent list (this domain's fabrication risks):** companies, products, funding rounds,
  market share, growth rates, customer claims.

## Application

1. **Credit inline context**, then ask only the unanswered questions (max 3):
   1. What market or problem space, in your words?
   2. What decision should this landscape support?
   3. Any boundary — geography, buyer size, price band?
   If unanswered, proceed with labeled assumptions.
2. **Show the 3-bullet search plan** — what you'll search, source types (analyst and review sites,
   company and pricing pages, funding databases, industry press, trade bodies, practitioner
   communities), and how facts will be separated from inference. Continue unless revised.
3. **Research in Just Enough Mode** and emit the schema below *exactly* — it is the stable base
   that quarterly re-scans diff against.

### Output schema (do not reorder)

~~~markdown
# Market Landscape Snapshot

## 1. Scope
**Market / problem space:** | **Boundary:** | **Decision supported:** | **As-of date:**

## 2. How This Market Segments
- [3-5 segments as buyers experience them, each 1 bullet]
- [Where vendor categories disagree with buyer reality: 1 bullet]

## 3. Player Map
### Direct players
- **[Name]:** [who they serve; wedge; 1 momentum signal; URL]
### Adjacent players (could enter)
- **[Name]:** [why adjacency matters; URL]
### Substitutes and non-consumption
- **[What buyers do instead]:** [why it persists]
### Emerging entrants
- **[Name]:** [what bet they're making; funding/traction signal; URL]

Cap the full map at 12 players; strongest signal only.

## 4. Dynamics
- **Where the money is:** [2 bullets, labeled]
- **Where the momentum is:** [2 bullets, labeled]
- **Consolidation or fragmentation:** [1 bullet]
- **Technology or regulatory shifts in play:** [1-2 bullets]

## 5. Whitespace and Dead Zones
- **[Apparent gap]:** opportunity or dead zone? [evidence either way]
- [2-3 of these, each with the honest counter-reading]

## 6. So What?
- **3** implications for the decision named in Scope
- **2** players to deep-dive next
- **3** assumptions to validate
Each bullet: label, confidence, URL where relevant.
~~~

A copy/paste fill-in version of this schema, with quality checks, lives in [`template.md`](template.md).

### Final Step (offer exactly 4 options)

1. Run [`competitive-research-snapshot`](../competitive-research-snapshot/SKILL.md) on the deep-dive players
2. Size the most promising segment with a TAM/SAM/SOM pass
3. Draft a positioning hypothesis against this landscape ([`positioning-statement`](../positioning-statement/SKILL.md))
4. Schedule-ready version: what should a quarterly re-scan watch?

Accept `1`, `2`, `3`, `4`, `1 and 2`, `Verbose Mode`, or a custom path.

## Examples

**Segmentation catching a vendor/buyer disagreement (all names fictional):**

> Vendors in this space market three categories: "observability platforms," "APM," and "log
> management." Buyers in practitioner forums segment differently — **Fact**
> ([community thread, Jun 2026](https://example.com/thread)): by *who gets paged* (dev-owned vs.
> ops-owned) and by *cost model tolerance* (per-seat vs. per-GB). Two "different" vendor categories
> compete head-to-head for dev-owned/per-seat buyers — **Inference** (same buyers evaluating both in
> review-site comparisons). The category language is marketing architecture, not market structure.

**A whitespace claim surviving the dead-zone test:**

> **Apparent gap:** nobody serves sub-50-employee agencies at self-serve pricing. Opportunity or dead
> zone? Two prior entrants targeted exactly this and pivoted upmarket within 18 months — **Fact**
> ([funding announcements, URLs](https://example.com)). Their stated reason was willingness-to-pay,
> not demand — **Inference** (founder postmortem cites CAC/LTV, not lack of interest). Verdict:
> conditional whitespace — viable only with a radically cheaper acquisition motion. **Assumption to
> validate:** the segment's tooling budget clears $50/month.

See [`examples/sample.md`](examples/sample.md) for a complete worked scan (fictional FSM-software
market) whose output feeds the `competitive-research-snapshot` example — the chain's schemas
demonstrated end to end. [`examples/sample-industrial.md`](examples/sample-industrial.md) runs the
same schema in a fictional industrial market, where the substitutes and freshest signals change
completely.

## Common Pitfalls

- **Adopting the analyst map.** Reciting a quadrant is not a landscape scan — quadrants exclude
  substitutes, lag emerging entrants, and segment by what's convenient to rank. Use them as one
  OSINT source, labeled, never as the frame.
- **Omitting non-consumption.** A player map without "what buyers do instead" flatters every vendor
  on it and hides the real competitor: inertia.
- **Whitespace romanticism.** Declaring every empty cell an opportunity. If the counter-reading is
  missing, the analysis is a pitch, not intelligence.
- **Player-map sprawl.** Twenty players with two facts each beats nothing, but twelve with the
  strongest signal each beats it badly. The cap is the discipline.
- **Scope drift between re-scans.** Changing the boundary or schema between runs silently breaks
  comparability — a re-scan of a different scope is a new baseline, and should say so.

## References

- [`autonomous-investigation`](../autonomous-investigation/SKILL.md) (Workflow) — the governing protocol
- [`intelligence-collection-disciplines`](../intelligence-collection-disciplines/SKILL.md) (Component) — discipline sources and signal chains
- [`competitive-research-snapshot`](../competitive-research-snapshot/SKILL.md) (Workflow) — deep-dive on the players this scan surfaces
- Market sizing TAM/SAM/SOM (optional companion activity) — sizes the segments this scan maps
- [`positioning-statement`](../positioning-statement/SKILL.md) (Component) — positions against this landscape
- Adapted from `market-intelligence/market-landscape-scan-prompt.md` in the
  `https://github.com/deanpeters/product-manager-prompts` repo.

## Failure Exits & Edge Cases

- **No network / no retrievable sources:** stop before emitting the schema. Do not fill it from memory — an uncited player map violates the do-not-invent list. Exit: deliver Scope + search plan only, and tell the user the scan needs web access to proceed.
- **Sources too thin after honest effort:** if fewer than 3 citable signals exist for a player, drop the player rather than pad it. A 6-player map with evidence beats a 12-player map with filler; say the map is source-limited.
- **Upstream protocol missing:** if [`autonomous-investigation`](../autonomous-investigation/SKILL.md) is unavailable, proceed with the embedded contract in Key Concepts (3-question budget, Fact/Inference/Assumption labels, dead-zone test) — do not abandon those rules.
- **Wrong scope:** if the user asks "how big is the market?", that is sizing (TAM/SAM/SOM), not this skill — offer Final Step option 2 instead of drifting the schema.

## NOT for

- Market sizing or revenue estimation (structure, not magnitude — use a TAM/SAM/SOM pass downstream).
- Deep single-competitor profiles (that is `competitive-research-snapshot`, Final Step option 1).
- Financial advice or investment recommendations — momentum signals are evidence-labeled observations, not calls.
- Internal tooling decisions with no external market (no players, no substitutes — nothing to scan).

## FAQ

**Do I have to answer the 3 opening questions?** No — unanswered questions proceed as labeled assumptions. But a stated decision ("supports Q4 market entry") sharpens the So-What section, so answer if you can.

**Why is the player map capped at 12?** Depth beats breadth: twelve strongest-signal entries are usable; twenty half-filled ones are noise (see Common Pitfalls).

**Can I re-run quarterly with a changed boundary?** You can, but it is a new baseline, not a re-scan — comparability with the previous snapshot breaks (see Common Pitfalls).

---

## 中文速览（Quick Guide）

- **做什么**：按「检索计划→细分→玩家地图→动态→空白点→下一步选项」的工作流画出市场结构图——谁在哪玩、为何；只画结构，不估市场规模。
- **何时用**：进入或重估一个市场之前，为后续 sizing、定位、竞对深研打底时。
- **核心步骤**：定市场／决策／边界（至多 3 问）→ 出检索计划并过闸 → 买家视角细分＋玩家地图（含非消费替代品）→ 动态与空白点（过「死区检验」）→ 给下一步选项；事实／推断／假设全程分标。
- **国内可达性边界**：主流程依赖网络检索（分析师报道、评测、社区、融资信号）——境外分析师报告与社区不可达时，用可访问的公开中文渠道替代并如实标注来源；检索完全不可用时按正文 Failure Exits 只交付 Scope＋检索计划，不凭记忆填玩家地图，不虚构公司、份额或增速。