Market research is a critical tool for business yet often overlooked or underutilized.   Are real customers willing to pay real money for your product or service?  If so you have a real business.  Do not just ask your friends & family for feedback, they do not want to hurt your feelings and will not be objective.  Do market research with real customers.  Whether you conduct qualtitative (focus groups or a listening tour) or quantitative reseach using Zoomerang or Survey Monkey for example does not matter.  Just make sure you ask questions in an objective way so you get real feedback that is useful.   Unless you have expertise in house it makes sense to engage an indepeendent outsider who can help draft the questionaire otherwise it can be garbage in and garbage out wasting time with useless informtion.    Research does not require big budgets but it does need to be objctive to gain real customer insights.