Conduct market research across social and travel platforms

This skill conducts market research - market sizing, regional demand, pricing, trend, or consumer-behavior data - by selecting and running the right Apify Actor: location and geospatial analysis via Google Places/Maps, regional interest via Google Trends, pricing and demand via Facebook Marketplace, event-market data via Facebook Events, consumer needs via Facebook Groups, market landscape and business density via Facebook Pages and contact-information scrapers, cultural insights via Facebook photo research, niche targeting and market sizing via Instagram hashtag scraping and stats, market activity and intelligence via Instagram Reels and full-profile data, product-launch research via the Instagram API scraper, hospitality-market data via Booking.com, and tourism insights via TripAdvisor reviews. It follows a five-step workflow: identify the research type and matching Actor, fetch that Actor's input schema dynamically via the mcpc CLI, ask the user for output preferences and result count, run the analysis script, and summarize the findings.

Use it when the task needs market sizing, regional demand, pricing, trend, or consumer-behavior data gathered from maps, travel, Facebook, Instagram, or trend sources, and needs both structured market data and a synthesized view of opportunities or risks. Its own limitations restrict it to tasks that clearly match this scope, and it is not a substitute for environment-specific validation, testing, or expert review; if required inputs, permissions, safety boundaries, or success criteria are missing, it stops and asks rather than guessing.

Requires an .env file with APIFY_TOKEN, Node.js 20.6+ for native --env-file support, and the mcpc CLI (npm install -g @apify/mcpc). Before running, it asks for the output format - a quick chat answer with no file saved, a full CSV export, or a full JSON export - and how many results to pull.

node --env-file=.env ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/reference/scripts/run_actor.js \
  --actor "ACTOR_ID" \
  --input 'JSON_INPUT'

The final report states how many results were found, the output file's location and name, key market insights, and suggested next steps such as deeper analysis or validation.

Runs on Apify Actors such as compass/crawler-google-places, compass/google-maps-extractor, apify/google-trends-scraper, apify/facebook-marketplace-scraper, apify/facebook-events-scraper, apify/instagram-hashtag-stats, voyager/booking-scraper, and maxcopell/tripadvisor-reviews, among related Actors for group, page, and photo research. It fetches each selected Actor's description, input parameters, and output fields dynamically through the mcpc MCP CLI (mcp.apify.com) rather than hardcoding schemas, and names concrete recovery steps for common failures - missing APIFY_TOKEN, missing mcpc, a misspelled Actor ID, a failed run to check via the Apify console link, or a timeout that needs a smaller input or a longer --timeout.

Market researchers, strategy, and product teams who need location, pricing, trend, or consumer-behavior data pulled from maps, travel, Facebook, Instagram, or trend sources without hand-picking scraper parameters or writing extraction scripts themselves.