market research info and help required

[fredfarcle]

Like everyone else on the planet I'm working on a web based application, this one is industry specific (Construction, an Industry I have 40 years experience in).

There seems to be a plethora of desktop stuff available in the specific area I'm working on, most of it expensive, bloated rubbish IMHO but what I'd like to find out is their actual penetration of the market ie. what is popular and the price point it achieves.

Is this simple to do and at what approximate cost.

Second question, this app has the potential to collect industry pricing information (assuming it get's used enough), which I know receives a premium price from current vendors of this type of data, so how easy is it to sell to these vendors and if you can, what's it worth? or put differently, what's it going to cost to find out?

I'm also assuming this byproduct data is legal to sell as it would be abstracted away from any connection to individual users, wouldn't mind an opinion on this either.

Any clues gratefully received.