Market Gap Analysis
Market Gap Analysis compares what customers actually need against what's currently on offer, so you can see where demand is going unmet and aim a new product or service at it.
The route narrows step by step across the page, ending on the gap nobody else has spotted.
Reach for this when…
- You're picking the next product line and guessing instead of checking.
- Customers keep asking for something none of your competitors sell either.
- You want a genuine white space, not just a slightly cheaper me-too.
How to run it
- Map what's currently on offer in your category, yours and competitors'.
- Talk to real customers about what they need but aren't getting.
- Lay the two side by side and mark where need outstrips supply.
- Rank the gaps by size and by how well they fit what you can build.
- Test the strongest gap with a real offer before committing fully.
A worked example
Situation. Elena Ruiz runs Torrefacto Ruiz, a coffee export business in Valencia, Spain, competing on the same green-bean grades as everyone else.
Applied. She mapped what regional roasters were selling against what buyers in Seoul and Berlin kept asking her reps for, and found nobody local offered traceable single-farm lots with harvest-level data.
Result. She built a small traceable-lot line around that gap. It became her highest-margin product within a year, not because it was cheaper, but because nobody else had bothered to fill the gap.
The catch
The hardest part isn't spotting the gap, it's checking there's a business behind it - some gaps exist because nobody can serve them profitably. It also dates fast: a gap you find today attracts competitors the moment it proves out. Treat it as a starting hypothesis, not a green light.
A gap nobody else has filled is sometimes a gap nobody else could make money filling. Check the economics before you build.