What's Actually in a Market Map (and What the Alternatives Cost)

Search for what a “market map” actually contains and the descriptions stay vague on purpose: a custom scope, a bespoke deliverable, priced on request. That works for a staffed research firm selling hours. It doesn’t answer the question a firm actually has before it signs up for anything: what do I get, and what does the alternative cost me instead?

Here’s the honest version, module by module, for the one report we build.

What does a Market Map actually contain?

Every map ships the same six modules, every time. Nothing is added or dropped per client: the brief changes what goes into each module, not which modules exist.

Module	What it answers	The method, in full
Market & sector sizing	How big is this market, and how many companies are actually in scope?	How to build a market map for an executive search
Compensation benchmark	What does this seat actually pay, sourced rather than guessed?	Executive compensation benchmarking
Talent pool, ringed	How deep is the pool, and who’s realistically in it?	Talent mapping for executive search
Comparable placements	Who got hired into a similar seat recently, and from where?	A worked market map example
Feasibility & search kit	What’s the real timeline and cost, and what could block it?	The executive search process
Sources & verification	What backs every figure, and has it actually been checked?	Every source re-fetched before the map ships, see below

Each of those links is the full method behind one module, written so you could build it yourself by hand. That’s deliberate: the method is public, and a Market Map is the finished version of the same work, built faster and checked before it ships.

How does it get built that fast?

Research runs in parallel, not start to finish

Each module runs as its own research pass over the primary record, SEC filings, wage data, company registries, press, in parallel rather than as one long report written start to finish. That’s the difference between a map landing in 24 hours and a researcher’s week.

Every figure gets checked before it ships

Then it gets checked. A verification gate re-fetches every source cited in the report and confirms the figure still holds on the page before anything ships. Anything it flags goes to a human before the map does. Every number that survives carries a label: fact, estimate, or inference, the same discipline behind every guide on this site.

What does it replace, and what does each alternative actually cost?

The published numbers, not a rate card

We publish this comparison on our own pricing page, not just here, so the numbers below are the same ones a client sees before they sign up: a staffed talent-research report starts at $17,500 there, against $1,950 a month for two Market Maps on the entry plan.

The alternative	What it typically costs	What’s still on you
A staffed talent-research report	$17,500 to $30,000 per report	Weeks of turnaround, then a static document
A full-time research analyst	$6,000 to $7,000 a month, before ramp	Managing, training, and finding a mandate worth loading them onto
A market-intelligence data subscription	$1,000 to $4,000 a month	The raw data and the search bar; the sizing, sourcing, and write-up are still a job on someone’s desk
A MergeSearch Market Map	From $1,950 a month, two maps included	Nothing. The finished, sourced document lands in 24 hours

The real comparison isn’t the monthly number anyway. It’s one mandate: a single won search covers a year of this many times over. How to win an executive search mandate walks through the other side of that same math: what the evidence in the map actually changes about the pitch.

What it doesn’t replace

Your own researcher

A Market Map doesn’t replace a firm’s own researcher. That researcher isn’t idle; they’re loaded on the mandates already signed, which is where they should be. A Market Map exists for the pitch that isn’t won yet, the one nobody puts a loaded researcher against because the week costs the same whether the pitch lands or not.

A data subscription

It doesn’t replace a data subscription either. LinkedIn Recruiter and PitchBook are seats in a platform you operate yourself: real data, but the sizing, the sourcing pattern, and the write-up stay a job on somebody’s desk the week before the pitch. A Market Map is the finished document instead, built on your brief, not another tool to learn.

The through-line

A Market Map is fixed, not custom: the same six modules, sourced the same way, in the same 24 hours, whatever the brief. That’s what makes it comparable to the alternatives at all: a bespoke research engagement has no rate card because every one is different, and this one does, because every one isn’t.

Read the module methods yourself, then see what one built on your own brief looks like. Your first month is free: two Market Maps on your own briefs, plus the Opportunity Monitor on your market, no card.

Sources

• MergeSearch, pricing and alternatives comparison (the published figures for a staffed research report, an analyst hire, and a data subscription).
• MergeSearch, how a Market Map is built and checked (the research-agent and verification-gate description quoted above).