Products & Services Deep Dive
Last updated: 17 September 2025
Objective:
Get behind the jargon to understand a company’s products and services. This prompt produces a comprehensive report breaking down a company’s products and services, its top revenue makers and explains what they really do. It examines strengths and weaknesses relative to competition, customers, pricing trends where available, key recurring positive and negative themes in product reviews, intellectual property and any litigation or recalls.
Explanation:
When investors buy stocks, they implicitly buy a business’s portfolio of products and services, often without really understanding exactly what they do. To address this gap, investors need to know in plain terms, what a company truly sells, how customers discover, purchase, and use it, why buyers choose it over rivals, and how pricing, recalls, litigation, and intellectual property (IP) shape durability and margin.
The prompt below operationalizes this need: it forces a clean product/service taxonomy; maps the end-to-end customer journey; captures current pricing and 12-month price trends; benchmarks against top competitors on practical dimensions (ease, performance, integrations, support, total cost); synthesizes reputable review data; and surfaces safety events, product-related cases, and defensible IP. The result is a product lens that can form the foundations of better understanding or even real world modeling of revenues, mix, growth, cost of goods (COGS), and risk, that has a sound basis in what matters for the company.
As always, be aware that models can make mistakes. At each step, examine the response and challenge information or conclusions that appear erroneous before proceeding to any subsequent steps. If in doubt use a second model with the same prompt to verify the information and generate challenge questions and answers (CoVe process) to correct interpretations of data.
Link to blog post explanation:
N/A
Preferred Model(s):
· ChatGPT-5+
Important Execution Notes:
Prompt has three input. Insert COMPANY_NAME where indicated and add the Sector/Category if know or leave for model to decide.
Geographic focus is by default set to GLOBAL but can be changed to country specific.
Look-back Periods are pre-specified for PRICE TRENDS, RECALLS and LITIGATION but can be adjusted by the user.
Sample Output:
Copy/Paste Prompt Set:
Important note: Subscribers can use this prompt set for their own analysis. However, the prompt is copyrighted by The Inferential Investor, paywalled, and must not be shared without permission.
Role
You are an equity analyst performing a deep product/services dive to understand what the company really sells and how it makes money—in plain English, minimal jargon, and with all acronyms defined on first use.
Inputs
Company: [COMPANY NAME]
Sector/Category: [INSERT IF KNOWN]
Geography focus: [GLOBAL]
Periods: Price trends (last 12 months); Recalls (last 3 years); Litigation (active + last 5 years)
Objectives
Explain the company’s products/services in simple terms; 2) Map how customers discover, buy, use, and pay; 3) Compare offerings vs competitors; 4) Summarise reputable review-site feedback; 5) Identify price trends; 6) Surface recalls, product-related litigation, and IP (intellectual property); 7) Clarify brand architecture. Avoid buzzwords; define all acronyms.
Method & Sources (prioritise recency and credibility)
Company: product pages, pricing pages, docs, investor filings (e.g., 10-K/20-F Item 1 & MD&A), earnings call transcripts.
Pricing: official price lists/MSRP (manufacturer’s suggested retail price), catalogues, major retailer listings, web archives for historical prices where needed.
Reviews: G2, Gartner Peer Insights, TrustRadius, Capterra (software); Consumer Reports, Wirecutter, Rtings, app stores (hardware/consumer); only include sites with clear methodology.
Recalls/Safety: CPSC (US), EU Safety Gate (formerly RAPEX), NHTSA (autos), FDA/TGA (regulated products), equivalent national databases.
Litigation: company legal disclosures, reputable legal trackers/press releases; summarise status and materiality.
IP: USPTO/EPO/WIPO patent search; company IP pages.
Competitors: official sites + independent comparisons/reviews.
Cite every non-obvious claim with a source and date.
Deliverables (use the exact structure and tables)
1) Executive Snapshot (≤10 bullets)
What the company sells (plain English), top 3 revenue drivers, typical customer, buying motion, average price band, 3 biggest strengths/weaknesses vs rivals, overall review sentiment (one-line), any notable recalls/litigation/IP items, and brand architecture in one sentence.
2) Product/Service Catalogue (plain English)
Table A — Offering taxonomy
Columns: Product/Service name | What it does (non-technical) | Primary customer/user | Problem solved / job-to-be-done | How it’s delivered (on-prem, cloud, physical) | Monetisation (one-time, subscription, usage-based; define acronyms like ARPU = average revenue per user) | Key dependencies/inputs | Launch year / version notes | Top 3 alternatives | Sources.
Note any bundles/tiers, regional variants, and add-on features.
3) Customer Journey & Buying Motion
Diagram + bullets: Discover → Evaluate → Purchase → Onboarding/Implementation → Use/Support → Renew/Repeat.
For each stage: typical decision makers, channels (direct, partners, marketplaces), average deal size/cycle (if available), switching costs, lock-in mechanisms, and support model. Define any acronyms (e.g., SLA = service level agreement).
4) Pricing & Packages
Table B — Current price snapshot
Columns: Product/Tier | List price / range | Meter(s) for usage pricing | Discounting norms | Notable promos/credits | Sources.
Table C — 12-month price trend
Columns: Product/Tier | Start price (t-12) | Latest price | % change | Observed drivers (input costs, FX, competitive response) | Evidence links.
Flag regions where pricing differs materially and any price-cap or regulatory constraints.
5) Competitive Positioning (plain English, no buzzwords)
Table D — Side-by-side vs top 3 competitors
Columns: Dimension (ease of use, reliability, performance, integrations, implementation time, support, total cost of ownership, privacy/security posture) | Company | Competitor A | Competitor B | Competitor C | Evidence (review or test).
5 bullets: Relative strengths (where and why) and weaknesses/gaps (where and why). Distinguish feature parity vs true differentiation.
6) Review Intelligence (reputable sources only)
Table E — Review synthesis
Columns: Source | Sample size | Overall rating | Top 3 positives (themes + short quotes) | Top 3 negatives | Method notes (verification/moderation?) | Date range | Link.
Conclude with a one-paragraph sentiment summary. Avoid cherry-picking; call out bias or small-n limitations.
7) Recalls, Product Issues & Safety (last 3 years)
Table F — Recalls/alerts
Columns: Date | Jurisdiction/Agency | Product | Issue | Units affected | Remedy/Action | Operational/financial impact (if any) | Link.
Include any voluntary fixes and firmware/software advisories.
8) Product-Related Litigation (active + last 5 years)
Table G — Cases/claims
Columns: Filing date | Forum | Plaintiff/Type | Product at issue | Allegation | Status | Potential exposure/materiality | Link.
Summarise relevance to reputation, sales continuity, or margins.
9) Intellectual Property (patents, copyrights, key trademarks)
Table H — IP snapshot
Columns: Type | Title/Mark | Jurisdiction | Filing/Grant date | Expiry (if applicable) | Claimed coverage (plain English) | Relevance to moat | Links (USPTO/EPO/WIPO/Company).
Note any FTO (freedom to operate) concerns or dependency on licensed tech (define FTO on first use).
10) Brand Architecture
Table I — Brands/lines
Columns: Brand | Products under brand | Target segment | Region | Positioning statement (plain English) | Potential confusion/overlap.
Clarify masterbrand vs sub-brand strategy and any white-label/OEM use.
11) Synthesis: How the Company Makes Money
6–8 bullets connecting offerings to revenue drivers (volume, price, mix, renewal/attach rates), margin drivers (COGS inputs, support burden, channel rebates), and risk/opportunity (pricing power, substitution risk, regulatory exposure, supply constraints).
End with a 30-word “so-what” for investors.
12) Appendix — Sources & Traceability
Numbered list of all sources with access dates; prefer primary links. Every table cell with a claim should map to a source number.
Style & Quality Bar
Explain like to an intelligent non-specialist; define all acronyms at first mention.
No marketing phrases. Prefer concrete, testable statements with dated evidence.
If data are unavailable, state the gap and propose how to estimate it (e.g., basket pricing, web archives, channel checks).
Output Format
Return the report in markdown using the section and table labels above (Tables A–I), followed by the Appendix. Keep the executive snapshot and synthesis crisp.