Barriers to Market Entry

Your constantly-updated definition of Barriers to Market Entry and collection of videos and articles
152 shares

What are Barriers to Market Entry?

A barrier to market entry is an obstacle (usually high costs) which prevents a product from gaining traction in a new market. Such obstacles can be natural (i.e., due to the nature of the product and the characteristics of its target market) or artificial (i.e., imposed by existing dominant players or governments to prevent newcomers and competition).

The difficulty in entering a market rests somewhere in between a monopoly (where entry is almost impossible) and a zero-cost market (where everyone can enter without facing any obstacles). While monopolies are not unheard of, in reality there is no such thing as a zero-cost market. Entering a market usually demands making an investment (even if only in time). Sometimes, this investment is significant due to the nature of the product or the market it tries to enter (e.g., high R&D costs, owning or controlling a resource, the size of the network of existing users)—these are considered to be natural barriers to entering a market. Those who do make such investments, however, then have a natural interest in preventing others from obtaining a foothold in a market—in order to limit competition and therefore maximize profit. As such, they may erect artificial barriers, through aggressive pricing strategies, advertising and image-making, predatory acquisitions, litigation, loyalty schemes, high customer-switching costs, or lobbying for government support. Regarding government support, special tax benefits for existing organizations can act as another barrier for newcomer entities.

Barriers to entry (both natural and artificial) can lead to monopolistic or oligopolistic situations in a given market. In a free society such as a liberal democracy, these then require state intervention in order to keep competition alive in that area. While such extreme circumstances are rare, designers should nevertheless be mindful of the extent of the range of barriers to entry.

Literature on Barriers to Market Entry

Here’s the entire UX literature on Barriers to Market Entry by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about Barriers to Market Entry

Take a deep dive into Barriers to Market Entry with our course User Research – Methods and Best Practices .

How do you plan to design a product or service that your users will love, if you don't know what they want in the first place? As a user experience designer, you shouldn't leave it to chance to design something outstanding; you should make the effort to understand your users and build on that knowledge from the outset. User research is the way to do this, and it can therefore be thought of as the largest part of user experience design.

In fact, user research is often the first step of a UX design process—after all, you cannot begin to design a product or service without first understanding what your users want! As you gain the skills required, and learn about the best practices in user research, you’ll get first-hand knowledge of your users and be able to design the optimal product—one that’s truly relevant for your users and, subsequently, outperforms your competitors’.

This course will give you insights into the most essential qualitative research methods around and will teach you how to put them into practice in your design work. You’ll also have the opportunity to embark on three practical projects where you can apply what you’ve learned to carry out user research in the real world. You’ll learn details about how to plan user research projects and fit them into your own work processes in a way that maximizes the impact your research can have on your designs. On top of that, you’ll gain practice with different methods that will help you analyze the results of your research and communicate your findings to your clients and stakeholders—workshops, user journeys and personas, just to name a few!

By the end of the course, you’ll have not only a Course Certificate but also three case studies to add to your portfolio. And remember, a portfolio with engaging case studies is invaluable if you are looking to break into a career in UX design or user research!

We believe you should learn from the best, so we’ve gathered a team of experts to help teach this course alongside our own course instructors. That means you’ll meet a new instructor in each of the lessons on research methods who is an expert in their field—we hope you enjoy what they have in store for you!

All open-source articles on Barriers to Market Entry

Please check the value and try again.

Open Access—Link to us!

We believe in Open Access and the democratization of knowledge. Unfortunately, world-class educational materials such as this page are normally hidden behind paywalls or in expensive textbooks.

If you want this to change, , link to us, or join us to help us democratize design knowledge!