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market-recon

The live fieldwork layer for psycho-logic — go look at the actual target market NOW instead of reasoning from your training-data stereotype of it. Use when a psycho-logic move needs grounding in a specific place: the user asks 'what do competitors in [region/country] actually do', 'what's the real price band / norm here', 'how do local leaders position themselves', 'research this market before we localise', 'what signals trust to buyers in X', or is about to launch/adapt in a market you haven't studied. Runs structured web research in the local language — local competitors and their signals, price bands, category conventions, review/trust sources, local terminology, taboos and regulations — and synthesises a compact perception profile the four moves consume. Inspired by Rory Sutherland's *Alchemy*. Routed to from psycho-logic; pair with cultural-context (the lens that tells you what to look for). 日本語・中文の相談(「現地の実態を調べて」「调研当地市场」)にも使う。

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SKILL.md (original)

Review the instructions the agent will receive before you install.

Market Recon — go look, don't assume

cultural-context gives you hypotheses about how a market thinks. This skill checks them against reality by going and looking — because your model's idea of "the German funeral market" or "how Thai buyers judge premium" is a stale average, and the cheap edge is in the specifics only local sources show. Stated stereotype is as unreliable as stated preference: gather revealed, current, sourced data.

The principle

Perception is local and current, so it has to be observed, not recalled. Two failure modes to avoid:

  • Reasoning from the stereotype. "Japanese buyers value quality" is true and useless — it doesn't tell you what this category's leaders actually signal, or what the price band is this year. Go find the specifics.
  • Reading the market in the wrong language. English-language summaries of a non-English market are a translation of a translation. Search in the local language, read local sources, note the words locals actually use.

What to gather (the recon checklist)

Aim each search at a lever the moves will pull:

  • Local players & positioning — who leads this category in this place, how they describe themselves, what promise they lead with. (feeds reframing)
  • Price band & framing — the real range, and how price is shown (per-day, all-in, tiered, hidden until contact). (feeds reframing)
  • Trust signals in use — guarantees, certifications, longevity claims, awards, the local proof-of-credibility everyone leans on. (feeds costly-signaling)
  • Trust locus & reviews — where buyers actually check: which review platforms, forums, associations, or personal/institutional channels. (feeds costly-signaling)
  • Category conventions & taboos — the unwritten "you must / you never" of this category here, plus regulations and sacredness lines. (constrains every move)
  • Felt-moment pain points — what local buyers complain about in the journey (found in reviews, forums, complaints). (feeds experience-design)
  • Local terminology — the exact words buyers and sellers use, for copy that sounds native rather than translated.

How to apply

  1. Fix the target. Market = place (country / region / urban-rural) × segment × category. The narrower, the more useful the recon.
  2. Pull the hypotheses from cultural-context so you know which dials to verify, not just collect trivia.
  3. Run structured web searches, in the local language. Use the web tools (WebSearch / WebFetch — load via ToolSearch if not already available). Query local competitors, price pages, review sites, forums, trade/association pages, and regulator pages. Read local-language sources directly.
  4. Synthesise a perception profile, not a link dump: for this market — what signals trust, what "premium" and "cheap" look like, the anchors on offer, the felt-moment pains, the taboos, and the native vocabulary. A page, sourced.
  5. Stamp recency and cite sources. Note the date of each key fact and flag what's uncertain. Anything still a hypothesis goes to counterintuitive-tests for a cheap behavioural check before you bet on it.
  6. Hand the profile to the moves. reframing / costly-signaling / experience-design now run on local reality, not a guess.

日本語の使用例

  • 「海外(または国内の別地域)で展開したいが、現地の実態を知らない」→ 記憶や一般論で組み立てず、現地語でWeb調査。現地の主要プレイヤー・価格帯・保証や資格などの信頼シグナル・レビューの見られ方を集め、"知覚プロファイル" に落とす。
  • 「競合と横並びで差別化できない」→ まず実際の競合が何をシグナルしているかを現地情報で棚卸し。空白のポジション(誰も出していない正直な弱点開示・全部込み価格など)が見えてから reframing / costly-signaling に渡す。
  • 「現地の相場観がわからない」→ 価格の"範囲"だけでなく見せ方(1日あたり/総額/段階/問い合わせまで非表示)まで調べる。価格フレームは市場ごとに違う。
  • 葬儀/シニア領域:関東/関西など地域単位で慣習と相場が違う。地域の葬儀社の打ち出し、口コミ・紹介・寺や地域評判といった信頼の所在、遺族の不満(journey の痛点)を現地ソースで集め、experience-design と costly-signaling の材料にする。タブー・法規制(表示や許認可)も必ず確認。

Cross-check against the canon

Sanity-check recon findings against these; if one contradicts your read, name it and justify it.

  • Paul Samuelson, revealed preference — weight what local players do (their pages, prices, signals) over what anyone says about the market.
  • Steve Blank, "get out of the building" — the customer-development canon for the same instruction: facts live outside your assumptions.
  • Kahneman, WYSIATI ("what you see is all there is") — the bias this skill exists to counter: a confident market picture built from the few sources you happened to see. Stamp recency, cite sources, flag gaps.

Related skills

  • cultural-context — the lens that tells you which dials to verify here; run it first
  • psycho-logic — the router; recon grounds its moves in the real target market
  • counterintuitive-tests — turn recon's remaining hypotheses into cheap behavioural tests
  • reframing / costly-signaling / experience-design — consume the perception profile this produces

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