Do I say 'a product has to be tested before it goes into the market' or 'to the market'?

Question

Do I say 'a product goes 'into' the market or 'to' the market? The context is the following:

Every product requires a specific testing protocol before it goes into/to the market.

Answer 1

Unless you're talking about a specific market (and your example sentence doesn't seem to be doing so), the most common expression (at least in AmE) would be "to market". Here are some examples:

Several high-profile short-sellers have targeted companies that have come to market via a Spac and will now be added to the Russell indices — but retail traders on Reddit forums have cheered the index reconstitution as a positive signal for popular stocks. (Miles Kruppa and Ortenca Aliaj, "Dozens of groups brought to market via Spacs to enter key Russell index," Financial Times, 25 June 2021)

Sound product lifecycle management has many benefits such as getting the product to market faster, putting a higher quality product on the market, improving product safety, increasing sales opportunities, and reducing errors and waste. (Troy Segal, "Product Lifecycle Management (PLM): Definition, Benefits, History," Investopedia, 17 March 2023)

Electric scooters rolling again in Mobile, as Lime returns to market (Lawrence Specker, "Electric scooters rolling again in Mobile, as Lime returns to market," AL.com, 23 June 2023)

"Support issues can be easy to overlook before you go to market -- this isn’t exactly the most exciting step -- so it often gets ignored." (David Zomaya, "How to Create Your Own Go-to-Market Strategy," Motley Fool, 18 May 2022 (updated 5 August 2022)

Here is a Google Books ngram showing the relative popularity of expressions with "to market" and "to the market". (I didn't include "into" because in all cases the results were much lower than with "to".)

Including "the" seems to be popular after "went", but I suspect that many of those texts are referring to specific markets, in which case a determiner would normally be required.

Answer 2

The most common locution in the modern U.S. for the idea that you are talking about is

is introduced into the market

primarily because the market is being considered a process rather than a place.

Of course the locutions

goes to the market

and

goes into the market

are used when what is being contemplated is some building used for selling things.

A very old-fashioned locution that may have conveyed both meanings depending on context is

goes to market

which derives from a time when a locality would have had one specific area devoted to the sale and purchase of virtually all types of goods.