Market research

Market research starts simple and gets overwhelming fast. You download an industry report. You read a few analyst pieces. You conduct interviews. You save charts, data sets, survey results, news articles, and notes from conversations. Within a few weeks, the material is substantial, but the synthesis is still in your head, scattered across twenty browser tabs and a dozen PDFs you've half-read. The hard part was never finding sources. It's making sense of them together, especially when they're in different formats, from different time periods, and telling slightly different stories about the same market.

This page is for analysts, consultants, marketers, founders, and anyone doing market or industry research who needs one place to collect everything and an AI that helps synthesise across it.

The problem

The sources are diverse and messy. Market research pulls in industry reports as PDFs, analyst commentary as web articles, interview transcripts as documents, survey data as spreadsheets, charts as screenshots, and notes from conversations. No two sources look the same, and they arrive from different places at different times.

You can't query across the full picture. The industry report says one thing. The interview transcript adds nuance. The data set complicates both. But they live in separate files in separate tools, and there's no way to ask a question across all of them at once. The synthesis depends on you manually re-reading, re-remembering, and mentally threading the sources together.

Insights get buried under volume. The more thorough your research, the more material you accumulate, and the harder it becomes to find the specific data point, quote, or finding you need. A statistic you read in a report two weeks ago is somewhere in your downloads, but finding it means opening PDFs one at a time until you recognise it.

What Fabric changes

Every source lives in one searchable place. Industry reports, articles, interview notes, charts, screenshots, data, and your own analysis all go into Fabric, regardless of format. Your market research is one body of material, not fragments across your file system.

You ask questions across the whole body of research. Search in plain language and Fabric finds the relevant report, interview excerpt, data point, or note, across everything you've saved. The statistic you read two weeks ago surfaces when you describe what it was about, not when you remember which PDF it was in.

The AI synthesises across sources for you. Instead of manually threading together what different reports and interviews say about the same trend, you ask the assistant. It pulls from your collected material and produces a synthesis grounded in your actual sources, not in generic internet results.

How it works

Search across every source type. Fabric's AI search reads inside PDFs, documents, images, and notes, and searches by meaning. Ask "projected growth of the Southeast Asian EV market" and get results from across your industry reports, articles, and notes, however they were titled or filed.

An AI research analyst. The AI assistant works from your saved material. Ask it to summarise what your sources say about a market trend, compare findings across reports, identify where sources disagree, or pull together the key data points on a specific segment. It synthesises from your research, so the output is grounded in what you've actually collected.

Annotate reports and articles. Annotate directly on PDFs, reports, and web articles. Highlight the key findings, mark the relevant charts, and add your own commentary. Those annotations become searchable alongside the source material.

Capture from anywhere. Download a report and drop it in. Clip an article with the web clipper. Forward an analyst email to your email-to-note address. Screenshot a chart from a presentation. Photograph whiteboard notes from a strategy session. Every source arrives in the same library.

Write analysis alongside your sources. Use notes and docs to draft market analyses, investment memos, or strategy documents with your research searchable right alongside the writing. The trail from conclusion to supporting evidence stays intact.

Map the market visually. Use the canvas to lay out market segments, competitive positions, trend maps, or opportunity matrices. Spatial thinking helps when you're working with a complex landscape and need to see the shape of what you know.

A market research workflow in Fabric

Start a space for the market or sector. Give the research its own space so everything is grouped together and searchable as a body.

Gather broadly, annotate as you go. Save every report, article, transcript, and data source as you encounter it. Annotate the key findings while they're fresh. Don't worry about filing. The material is findable by what it's about.

Synthesise by asking. When you need to pull together a view of the market, ask the assistant. "What do my sources say about pricing trends in B2B SaaS?" pulls from across your reports, interviews, and notes in one pass. Follow up with specifics: "Where do the reports disagree?" or "What data do I have on churn rates?"

Draft from the synthesis. Write your analysis in Fabric, pulling in findings and data points from your sources as you go. When a stakeholder challenges a claim, the supporting evidence is one search away.

Keep it current. As new reports and data arrive, add them to the space. The body of research stays searchable and grows over time, so updating a market view means adding to the existing foundation rather than starting over.

What compounds over time

Market research done well is cumulative. The report you read this quarter builds on the one from last quarter, and the trends only become visible when you can see across both. Teams that maintain their market research in Fabric find that each new report or data source adds to a growing, searchable body of knowledge rather than disappearing into a folder. The AI's synthesis gets richer as the library deepens, because it has more data points, more perspectives, and more history to draw on.

Over months, the library becomes an institutional asset. New team members can search it and get up to speed on a market without someone walking them through it. Returning to a sector you researched a year ago means the foundation is already there. The investment in gathering and annotating compounds rather than decaying.

Related use cases

For tracking specific named competitors rather than a whole market, see competitive research. For the general research process, see research projects. If this market research supports a sales effort, sales collateral and data room cover sharing material with prospects and stakeholders. For building a lasting knowledge system beyond any single research project, see second brain. Fabric is built for marketers and researchers.

Get started

Bring your industry reports, interview notes, and market data into one place and research from a system that synthesises across all of it. Try Fabric free.

FAQs

What types of market research sources can I save?

Industry reports (PDFs), analyst articles, interview transcripts, survey data, charts, screenshots, news articles, emails, slide decks, and your own notes and analysis. Fabric handles every format and makes all of it searchable.

Can I search across all my reports and notes at once?

Yes. Fabric's AI search reads inside every file type and searches by meaning. A question returns results from across your PDFs, articles, notes, images, and annotations together, regardless of where each source came from.

Can the AI summarise what my sources say about a market trend?

Yes. Ask the assistant about any trend, segment, or question, and it synthesises from your saved material. It can pull together findings from multiple reports, surface where sources agree or disagree, and identify data points relevant to a specific question.

Can I annotate industry reports and have those annotations be searchable?

Yes. Highlights and comments made on any PDF or document become part of the searchable library. When you search a topic, your annotations come back alongside the source text.

Can I search for a specific statistic or data point I read in a report?

Yes. Describe the data point in plain language and Fabric finds the relevant section of the relevant report, even if you can't remember the report's title, author, or publication date.

How does this compare to using a shared drive for market research?

A shared drive stores files by name and folder. Fabric makes everything searchable by meaning, reads inside PDFs and documents, and gives you an AI assistant that synthesises across your full body of research. The difference matters when you have dozens of reports and need to pull together what they collectively say about a topic.

Can multiple team members contribute to and search the same research library?

Yes. Share a space with your team and everyone can add sources and search across the whole collection. The research becomes a shared asset rather than knowledge locked in individual folders.

Can I save charts and screenshots from presentations?

Yes. Fabric reads text inside images and screenshots, so a captured chart, table, or slide becomes searchable by its content.

Can I share market research with clients or stakeholders?

Yes. Publish a curated collection, analysis, or summary with password protection and analytics. You control who has access and can track when it's been viewed.

Can I import research I've already done in Google Drive or Notion?

Yes. Fabric connects to Google Drive, Notion, Dropbox, and other sources, so you can bring in existing material without starting over.

Does it work for ongoing market monitoring, not just one-off research?

Yes. Add new reports, articles, and data as they arrive. The library grows over time and stays searchable, so updating a market view means building on the existing foundation rather than repeating the research.

Is my market research kept private?

Yes. Your content is encrypted and only visible to you, or to the team members you've shared a space with.