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Market research<\/a>\u00a0can 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\u00a0AI<\/a>. What\u2019s more, an update to a popular feature on\u00a0ChatGPT<\/a>\u00a0has made it even better at doing this kind of work.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Imagine that you have a\u00a0potential business idea<\/a>\u00a0but 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\u00a0marketing<\/a>\u00a0at the University of Maryland, you can use\u00a0Deep Research<\/a>, a ChatGPT feature that directs an\u00a0AI agent<\/a>\u00a0to develop a comprehensive, well-cited report on any topic.\u00a0<\/p>\n Last week, OpenAI upgraded Deep Research with some new abilities. The feature now runs on GPT-5.2, one of the company\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how to use it to get some thorough market research done quickly.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n 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 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,\u00a0and enter a prompt.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\nStep 1: Get your prompt right<\/h2>\n