The next question is invariably “tell me what it would cost me”. When I tell them that there is no straight answer to it, they don’t understand. But, that is the fact. Let us take an example. Let us say that you want to advertise. You can buy pace in the local newspaper. Or, you can buy space in the superbowl. What you do depends on the requirements and also on your ambitions. The cost depends on what you end up doing.

Similary, what kind of research you do and at what scale depends on the task on hand. Yes. But it also depends on the risk apetite and also on the budget availability. If you do research in just a single place vs in mutiple places, the cost is different. If you just check out one product option vs multiple product options, the cost is different.

The the straight answer to the question of “what would it cost?” and “would it be costly”, is : “it depends”.