How do you 'divide and conquer' (or really, collab) on market research between PMM, PM, competitive team and any other stakeholders like audience or industry marketing?

At Quizlet, we think user research and market research really can, and should, be part of everyone’s job, but the exact drivers and consultants in the mix for any given project depend on the ultimate purpose of the research.

Every company will have a different set up and default for research roles and responsibilities. At Quizlet we have an exceptional User Research Team that focuses primarily on qualitative research. They sit within the Product and Design org and mostly focus on deeper qualitative user understanding. Our Product Marketing Team takes broader ownership of market research and larger quantitative studies that help us size out TAM, validate market demand for particular feature sets, and understand brand perception and usage funnels. There are plenty of overlaps between these two worlds and so we stay in very close contact on projects.

This split helps make it easier for partner functions to know who to go to for what. In many cases, our head of user research will direct folks to the right place if people are unsure or haven’t yet clarified their research questions. Product Marketing tends to self-initiate most of our projects and we also tend to build longer term research programs that we run on some kind of recurring basis to capture market trends over time. Then, if we see changes, our research team can go in deep to figure out what might be behind the shifts we’re seeing.

We also have a cross-functional Competitive Intelligence Committee that product marketing helps facilitate. This group is composed of folks from product, marketing, and user research and we take responsibility for aggregating usage trends and for noting any significant launches or new entrants.