Are you wondering whether there are enough core consumers to build a business around your product? Trying to figure out how to determine the size of your market? This guide walks you through what a market is, why it matters, and how to understand if customers actually want the kind of product you’re offering.
Knowing your market is essential. It tells you whether your product solves a real need and whether the opportunity is big enough to support long-term growth.
Consumers show what they want by what they purchase. If they want something enough, they buy a product. They have determined that the solution to that particular pain point is worth the price.
Markets represent the aggregation of those consumer purchasing decisions. Instead of looking at one customer or one sale, a market looks at how groups of consumers behave across an entire category.
Understanding the market helps you answer key questions:
How are consumers behaving?
What products are they choosing?
Where does your product fit?
Is this a niche idea or a real category with room to grow?
After you identify your core consumer—the person who most acutely feels the pain point you solve—you need to know whether enough people have that same problem.
This is where market size comes in. It tells you whether your idea is large enough to support a viable food business.
Why focus on building into a large market? Think of it this way:
Would you rather have 1% of a $100,000 market or 1% of a $1 billion market?
The bigger the market, the bigger the potential:
More customers
More room to expand
More opportunities for retail placement
Faster path to meaningful revenue
Higher upside long term
A small but passionate audience may love your product, but if the market is too small, you may struggle to scale.
There are two practical steps to understanding your market: online research and in-store observation. Both are helpful when you're starting.
Start by defining your space:
What is your broad market?
Examples: Frozen foods, beverages, desserts, snacks, sauces, condiments.
What is your category?
This is the specific segment inside the broader market. Examples:
Frozen pizza inside frozen foods
Sparkling water inside beverages
Protein bars inside snacks
Then research the competitive landscape:
Who are the category leaders?
How are they priced—value, mid-tier, premium?
What pain points are they solving?
What claims do they highlight? (Organic, gluten-free, keto, protein, low sugar)
What values show up on packaging?
What size and format do they use?
This gives you a baseline for how customers behave in your category.
After online research, go to the grocery store. This is where real-world behavior shows up.
Look for:
How much room does each category get? Shelf space is one of the strongest signals of demand.
Do chips take up an entire aisle?
Does a niche, lentil-based product get half a shelf?
How many freezer doors are devoted to frozen pizza?
Categories with large shelf space represent large markets.
What sits at eye level?
What products get multiple facings?
Who gets endcaps or secondary placements?
Retailers give premium placement to products that sell consistently.
How many brands are on shelf?
How many SKUs per brand?
Crowded shelves often mean the category is big—but it also means you need a strong value proposition.
Understanding your market allows you to validate your product and your business. Consumers show what they want by what they purchase. If your product solves a real pain point at a price customers accept, they buy it—and the market reflects that behavior at scale.
To determine whether you’re building into a large enough market, start with online research, then walk grocery stores to see real-world patterns. Shelf space, pricing, category leaders, and consumer behavior all give you valuable data.
Remember:
Markets represent the aggregation of consumer purchasing decisions.