This Single ChatGPT Prompt Can Do Hours of Market Research in Minutes—Here’s How

AI is a powerful way to do market research. A big update from ChatGPT makes things even easier.

BY BEN SHERRY, STAFF REPORTER @BENLUCASSHERRY

Market research can be a slow, fragmented, and difficult process, often involving tedious internet searches, questionable data sources, and time-consuming manual synthesis. This makes it a great candidate for some assistance from AI. What’s more, an update to a popular feature on ChatGPT has made it even better at doing this kind of work. 

Imagine that you have a potential business idea, but still need to validate how viable it actually is, identify primary competitors in your market, and develop an ideal customer persona. Instead of spending hours collating data, explains Dan McCarthy, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Maryland, you can use Deep Research, a ChatGPT feature that directs an AI agent to develop a comprehensive, well-cited report on any topic. 

Last week, OpenAI upgraded Deep Research with some new abilities. The feature now runs on GPT-5.2, one of the company’s most recent models (previously it ran on a much older o3 model), and can now prioritize specific websites in its search process. Deep Research is available for all paid ChatGPT users. 

Here’s how to use it to get some thorough market research done quickly. 

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Step 1: Get your prompt right

To test out how this feature could help with market research, I pretended that I wanted to start a digital transformation firm based in Denver, Colorado, with a focus on upgrading bars with mobile, bar-to-table ordering capabilities. All I needed to do in order to get started was click the plus button next to the text box, select More, then Deep Research, and enter a prompt.

This prompt will determine the information that ChatGPT prioritizes in its search, so it helps to be verbose. If you need help developing a lengthy prompt, try using ChatGPT to help write it.

McCarthy, who uses AI tools extensively, says that an easy way to develop a comprehensive prompt is to activate the chatbot’s voice mode and simply have a conversation with it. Once you’ve explained what you want, McCarthy says, you can ask ChatGPT, “given all this that I’m telling you, what do you think would be the best thing that I should even be asking you?” That should help clear up any blind spots you might’ve missed. 

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