How long the market size would hold was the real question
A consulting case team was sizing the market for a specialty additive, a chemical added to a product to give it a particular property. The work was for a client deciding whether to enter the category. Volumes were flat and margins were healthy, and the number itself was not hard to establish.
What the number could not say was how long it would hold. Published sources describe what has already happened and are quieter on what would have to change next. Whether the market stays this size depends on whether the additive stays in the recipe, and that decision is made by the people who formulate the products it goes into. Nothing published says what would make them take it out.
We asked the formulators what triggers a switch
We ran moderated calls with formulators, the people who decide what goes into a product recipe, and with the packaging and materials leads around them. Those three see the same decision from different sides: the chemistry, the material it is applied to, and what the packaging format allows. The guide was built around the substitution trigger rather than around market share, so every call worked towards one question: what would make you design this additive out?
We moderated the interviews ourselves, so the case team could compare answers across formulators instead of spending the week arranging the calls. Every answer was recorded against the condition that would prompt it, which is what made the set comparable rather than a collection of separate opinions.
A market size with the conditions that would change it
The case team delivered the size, and with it the circumstances under which it would move, described by the people who would move it. That reframed the category from steady to conditionally steady, which is the more defensible answer and the more useful one for a client deciding whether to enter.
The conditions were specific enough that the client could watch for them. It left with a number and a short list of things to look out for, which is a more durable answer than the number on its own.
