Market Research & Competitive Analysis
Signature Course No. 288 — A Signature AI Socratic Coaching Course.
No experience needed — your coach starts where you are.
A New Kind of Learning
Socratic coaching, delivered by an agentic AI coach.
Not a course you watch. An AI coach you work with.
The Lighthouse Coach begins by discovering how you think about the subject, teaches what is missing, and gives you realistic practice before asking you to prove that you can use it. You may test out of concepts you already understand, while capstones turn the learning into a practical plan, decision, conversation, or other real-world result.
The curriculum is deliberately authored; the AI delivers it through coaching. It is not an AI randomly generating lessons.
A coach that teaches by asking — not by lecturing
The Lighthouse Coach is an AI Socratic coach built on Cognosco Learning's Market Research & Competitive Analysis course, in the Sales, Service & Revenue category. It does not play videos at you. It holds a conversation: it asks you a question, listens to your answer, names the misconception it hears, affirms what you got right, and asks the next question — the way a great coach works in the room.
Every organization makes decisions — launch this, enter there, charge that — and most of them rest, underneath the confident language, on opinion. Market research, done honestly, is the set of moves that replaces opinion with evidence proportionate to the decision. It is not magic and it is not certainty. It is disciplined curiosity with arithmetic attached.
You learn the upstream discipline of business evidence. Frame the research from the decision it must serve, with thresholds named before fieldwork; define the market on four coordinates you can defend; size it two independent ways and cross-check the answers until they argue productively; grade every source instead of collecting sources; interview customers about the last time, not the imagined next time; and sample honestly enough to know whose voice is missing.
It works in two movements. First, Module 1 — Learn the Market: Frame It, Size It, Hear It — work through Concepts 1–9, finishing with The Sized Market Memo; then, Module 2 — Study the Rivals, Synthesize the Evidence — work through Concepts 10–18, finishing with The Evidence Brief.
Both capstones produce real artifacts — the sized market memo, framed, bounded, sized two ways with ranges, on which a board can actually decide; and the evidence brief, the sized market, the graded competitor picture, the customer findings, and the recommendation with its stated confidence, ready to defend in the room where the decision will be made.
The honesty standard is part of the course. Market sizes here are ranges, never single gleaming figures, and every worked number is a stipulated teaching figure you can recompute yourself. Claims about competitors are graded — observed, reported, or asserted — never laundered into facts. One distinction runs through every concept: research exposes a decision to the possibility of being wrong, early, while being wrong is still cheap; reassurance merely makes a room feel better about a decision already made.
The course is self-paced and always on — roughly 30 minutes per concept, about 9 hours in full, taken in as many sittings as you like. You can type your answers, or talk out loud: the Voice Coach speaks its questions and listens to your spoken replies. Learners who already know the material can test out concept by concept.
Market Research & Competitive Analysis is part of The Lighthouse Signature Series — the online counterpart to the one-day, in-person learning Cognosco Learning has delivered since 2002.
Course Facts
One full concept, coached end to end — free: verify your email and we’ll send you a link to start.
Already enrolled? Enter the course →
Diagnose → Learn & Practice → Prove → Capstone
Every learner moves through the same discipline a Cognosco instructor would insist on in the room.
Diagnose
The Coach starts where the course starts: with the frame. Before any sizing begins, settle the decision the research serves — who decides, what the genuine options are including doing nothing, by when, and what rides on it — because findings without a decision have no standard of enough. Every concept opens with three questions that locate where you actually stand, and your answers shape how deeply the Coach works the concept with you. Everyone begins with Module 1 — no skipping the foundations you only think you have.
Learn & Practice
Work each concept in conversation with the Coach — spoken or written — then practice it against realistic situations until it holds up.
Prove
Every concept ends in proof: answer the check cold and demonstrate the skill. Know it already? Test out and take credit immediately.
Capstone
Finish with two capstones — The Sized Market Memo for Module 1 and The Evidence Brief for Module 2 — that pull the whole course together, and earn the certificate.
What You'll Learn
Evidence before spending. This course stands before the moment money goes into a market: it sizes and studies a market you have not yet entered, and builds evidence that does not yet exist, from customers who have not been asked and competitors who have not been studied.
Module 1 builds the market side. The frame and the boundary; the funnel and the count, cross-checked; sources graded; segments cut where behavior differs; and the qualitative craft — past-tense interviews, calibrated questions, honest samples.
Module 2 builds the competitive and synthesis side. The four-ring competitive map; the graded profile; watching without chasing; surveys whose rates arrive with their silence attached; price researched up the evidence ladder; and the closing disciplines — triangulation, the decision-ready brief, and the research standard.
And it holds its honesty lines throughout. Every number carries its assumptions in plain sight, every claim carries its grade, and the missing voice is reported as a finding — because a figure you cannot decompose is a figure you cannot defend.
What you will learn
- Frame and bound a research question from the decision it serves, and define a market precisely enough to size it
- Size a market top-down and bottom-up, state the assumptions, carry the range, and cross-check the two answers
- Gather primary evidence honestly: graded desk research, customer interviews about real behavior, unbiased questions, and samples whose limits you can name
- Study competitors as customers see them, profile them from graded evidence, and watch their moves without chasing noise
- Synthesize conflicting evidence into a decision-ready brief that states its strength, its ranges, and its unknowns — inside the ethical lines of the craft
Everything in the course
- All 18 concepts of Market Research & Competitive Analysis, in 2 modules
- A starting-point check first — the Coach finds where you actually stand before teaching
- Learn, Practice, Prove for every concept — no passive video watching
- A test-out on every concept: prove you know it and move on
- The Voice Coach: talk with the Coach out loud — it speaks, listens, and replies
- A personal Learner Record of your work across the course
- Two capstone exercises: The Sized Market Memo and The Evidence Brief
- A printable session summary whenever you pause
- The Lighthouse Coach completion certificate (Signature Series)
- Your progress is saved as you go — stop anytime, resume where you left off
Built for the people whose decisions deserve evidence
Owners and product leads — deciding whether a market exists, how big it honestly is, and which segment to enter first; and marketing and strategy staff asked for the numbers behind a plan, and tired of defending figures they privately know are decoration.
Consultants and analysts — whose clients make launch, entry, and pricing decisions on the evidence they bring.
Managers handed a rival's move — a price cut, a launch, a claim — who must answer with something better than imitation or panic. This course assumes no statistics beyond ordinary business arithmetic — every calculation is shown with its working — and no prior research experience. It assumes you face, or expect to face, decisions that deserve evidence.
Prefer to learn live and in person? The same material anchors Cognosco's one-day programs — browse the in-person catalog.
Start with The Sized Market Memo
$195 — introductory price. One payment. No subscription, no password to manage.
Here is exactly what happens when you enroll:
- Pay securely with Stripe — you are taken straight into the course
- Create your learner profile and begin the Module 1 starting-point check
- Save the access key you are given — it restores your enrollment on any device
- Learn at your pace; your progress is stored in your browser on your device
For the full voice experience, use Chrome and allow the microphone when asked. Typing your answers works everywhere, all the time. Questions before you enroll? Email hello@cognoscolearning.com.
Before you enroll
What is a Socratic coaching session?
A conversation, not a video. Your coach asks a question; you answer — out loud by voice, or by typing — and the coach responds to what you said: naming the misconception it hears, affirming what you got right, and asking the next question. You advance only when you have mastered each concept, so a finished course means the learning held.
How long does it take — and how long do I have?
About 30 minutes per concept. Learn in sittings of any length; your progress is saved as you go. You have a full year from purchase to finish, and you can revisit and retake within that year.
What does the certificate verify?
That you completed every concept and both capstones of this course. Anyone can confirm a Cognosco certificate online — enter its certificate ID on our verification page.
What if it isn't for me — what are the refunds?
If you have not started, cancel for a full refund within seven days of purchase. Once you have started, there is no cash refund — stop before finishing and we credit the full amount you paid toward any other course in the library (credit valid one year from your original purchase). Once you complete the course, no refund or credit applies.
More Signature Courses are coming
Market Research & Competitive Analysis is Signature Course No. 288. Leave your email and we'll send you news of future Signature Courses and Lighthouse updates as they are announced — nothing else.