MARKET DEMAND: How to Read Market Demand Before Everyone Else Does
- Pavł Polø
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
A field guide to spotting rising trends, avoiding saturated categories, and launching products, playlists, and Amazon listings with real data behind them.
I feel like a different way to understand market/suppressed demand is the need of a people to visit a particular destination by using an airport, airline and particular route /or what new destination do they want to go to. Emotion is the driver. There also has to be a feeling associated with things.
Things associated happiness, relaxation, stress reduction, clean/healthy eating, finding meaning and purpose also serve as driving factor.
You also have a hub and spoke model.
There’s a thing that’s called suppressed demand that deals with how people search for things but never purchase or had a bad experience/or a groan. Also, too for saturation you don’t have enough players or “Big Boys” trying to enter the sphere. Try to compete with Big Boy or Big Däwg. It’s a losing battle.
Every airline route, every Amazon bestseller, and every song that breaks out of a niche playlist starts with the same quiet question: is there enough market demand here to justify the bet? Network planners at Delta and Emirates answer it with spreadsheets full of booking data. A first-time Amazon seller can answer it with a laptop and forty-five minutes. The tools differ. The logic doesn't.
Before diving into methodology, it's worth naming the pain points that trip up most people trying to gauge market demand on their own:
Mistaking a short-lived spike (a viral moment, a news cycle) for sustained, buyable demand.
Entering a category that looks exciting but is already crowded with entrenched competitors.
Relying on gut feeling instead of a repeatable, data-backed process.
Not knowing which free or paid tools actually measure demand versus vanity metrics.
If your looking for an escape and are looking for melodic EDM music with that European/Mediterranean/Balkan sound and you need a track for summer, traveling, self development, and overcoming personal adversity then listen to Bay of Kotor. It has accordion, chords, orchestral chords, guitar and more.
When creating music, its about crafting a quality song that does not follow a trend but something that represents change through timelessness.
Listen/Follow Pavł Polø on Spotify.
Market Demand: How Airlines Find New Routes (and Why It Matters to You)
Airline network planners don't guess where to fly next — they model it. The process leans on market demand forecasting, gravity/QSI (Quality of Service Index) models that estimate how much traffic a new route would capture from competitors, and economic indicators like GDP growth, tourism trends, and business travel patterns in the origin and destination markets
The most interesting input, though, is suppressed demand — people who searched repeatedly for flights but never booked because prices were too high or connections too inconvenient. Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways tracked exactly this pattern before expanding Pacific service, treating repeated, unconverted searches as proof that real appetite existed underneath a bad customer experience
Emirates did something similar before launching new city pairs: analysts studied search query volume, hotel booking trends, and visa application patterns for months to find out where travelers actually wanted to go, not where they said they did
Only after that demand signal checks out does the airline run the numbers on connecting traffic through its hub network, competitor strength on the route, and slot or bilateral-agreement restrictions before committing an aircraft
Translating the Airline Model to Products, Amazon, and Music
The exact same four-part framework — search behavior, suppressed demand, competitive landscape, and network fit — applies whether you're launching a kitchen gadget, a solo track, or a service business.
Search behavior: Google Trends shows whether interest in a keyword is climbing, flat, or seasonal — the consumer equivalent of an airline's route search data.
Suppressed demand: On Amazon, this shows up as customer reviews on competing products complaining about a missing feature or a bad experience — unmet demand hiding in plain sight.
Competitive landscape: For Amazon sellers, tools like Helium 10, Jungle Scout, and SellerSprite scan the catalog for products with steady monthly sales (roughly 200–500 units) but low review counts, a proxy for demand without saturation
Network fit: For musicians, this is genre and playlist fit — an indie artist who noticed rising “bedroom pop” interest on Google Trends timed a release to it and grew a following as a result
✦ GOLD NUGGET — The One Number That Matters Most Whether you're an airline, an Amazon seller, or an artist, the number to chase isn't total market size — it's obtainable demand: the slice of market demand you can realistically win given your resources and the competition already there. Business analysts call this the Serviceable Obtainable Market, or SOM — the practical, near-term target inside the larger Total Addressable Market (TAM) and Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM) |
How Saturation Level Affects Overall Demand
Every product category moves through a predictable arc known as the diffusion of innovation curve: innovators adopt first, then early adopters, then the early and late majority, until the market approaches its ceiling — the saturation point
During the saturation stage, sales growth stabilizes or slows sharply, competition intensifies, price wars erode margins, and expansion becomes harder because most realistic buyers have already made a purchase
This is why raw market demand alone is a misleading metric. A category can have massive total demand and still be a poor place to enter if saturation is high — you'd be fighting entrenched brands for scraps. The categories worth entering are the ones with rising demand and low saturation: real interest, not yet dominated by professional sellers or major labels.
Services That Detect Demand and Saturation
A short, practical stack — no single tool tells the whole story, so cross-reference at least two:
Google Trends — free, shows search interest over time and by region; best used across 3–5 years of data to separate real trends from seasonal or one-time spikes
Helium 10 / Jungle Scout / SellerSprite — Amazon-specific product research; filter by monthly sales, review count, and price to spot high-demand, low-competition niches
Keepa and CamelCamelCamel — free historical Amazon price and rank data to validate whether demand is steady or a temporary spike
Spotify for Artists and Chartmetric — listener and playlist analytics for tracking genre momentum and playlist saturation in music
TAM/SAM/SOM market sizing — a bottom-up framework (total customers × average spend) for estimating category size and your realistic share of it
Signs a Trend Is Genuinely Rising
Search interest climbs steadily over 4–8+ weeks rather than spiking and vanishing within a week or two
Related search queries and product reviews reveal a recurring complaint or unmet need, not just curiosity
Sales or streaming numbers grow without heavy discounting or paid promotion behind them
New entrants are still small, independent sellers or artists — not yet dominated by major brands or labels
Momentum shows up across more than one channel at once — Google, social platforms, and marketplace search all pointing the same direction
Five Actionable Steps You Can Take This Week
Search your product or topic idea in Google Trends and check the 5-year view — you want a rising or stable line, not a spike about to fall.
Read the 1–3 star reviews on the top three competing products or comparable tracks/playlists — that's where suppressed demand hides.
Run a free scan in Keepa, a Chrome extension, or a keyword tool's free tier to check sales consistency and competition density before spending on a paid subscription.
Estimate a rough SOM: how many realistic buyers exist in your specific niche, multiplied by what they'd reasonably spend — not the whole category.
Re-check your data source two weeks later; a real trend holds or grows, a fake one fades — patience is the cheapest research tool you have.
References
OAG — Airline Data Analytics: The Evolving Role of Analysis and New Data. https://www.oag.com/blog/airline-data-analytics-evolves-the-role-of-new-data
Colormelon — How Airlines Use Data Analytics to Decide New Routes. https://colormelon.com/how-airlines-use-data-analytics-to-decide-new-routes/
Aerotime — New Route Evaluation: How Airlines Decide Where to Fly Next. https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/the-science-of-new-route-evaluation-how-airlines-decide-where-to-fly-next
HubSpot — TAM, SAM & SOM: What Do They Mean & How Do You Calculate Them? https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/tam-sam-som
SellerSprite — Amazon Product Research Guide: How to Find Profitable Niches. https://www.sellersprite.com/en/blog/amazon-product-research-guide
LandingCube — The 8 Best Amazon Tools for Product Hunting. https://landingcube.com/amazon-product-research-tools/
Sprintzeal — Saturation Stage in Product Life Cycle. https://www.sprintzeal.com/blog/saturation-stage-of-product-life-cycle
KPU Pressbooks — Managing New Products: The Product Life Cycle & Diffusion of Innovation. https://kpu.pressbooks.pub/introductiontomarketing/chapter/7-5-managing-new-products-the-product-life-cycle/
Consumer Psychologist — Diffusion of Innovation: Consumer Behavior. https://www.consumerpsychologist.com/cb_Diffusion_of_Innovation.html
RouteNote Create — A Musician's Guide to Google Trends. https://create.routenote.com/blog/how-to-use-google-trends-for-music/
This article is for general educational purposes and does not constitute financial, investment, or business advice. Market conditions and third-party tool features change; verify current data before making purchasing or launch decisions.
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