For one of my classes, I'm supposed to analyze a market and see if there is an opportunity. To do so, I suppose I should check if there are existing stores that do what we would do, and the demographics. I need to figure out our target population.
Does anyone here have any experience in this field that they could share? I have to meet with my team by the end of the week, and we're presenting a preliminary proposal soon afterwards, so time is somewhat limited as our resources.
Thanks !
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
Oh man, I was so hoping I was going to win a whistle race here.
See how you're going to compete against your competitors, which ways you might be able to find a different niche, beat them on price, or in some other way make yourself profitable, despite the difficulties you'll come up against.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
We're getting a few generations which are starting to age and who were the first to have common headphone and earbud use with portable media.
Result: opportunities in catering to the new demands for treatment of hearing loss
Posted by Artemisia Tridentata (Member # 8746) on :
quote:We're getting a few generations which are starting to age and who were the first to have common headphone and earbud use with portable media.
To say nothing of people who are growing up thinking that guitars are supposed to sound like the speaker cone is cracked.
Posted by Phanto (Member # 5897) on :
I'm especially looking for, dunno, websites or magazines that analyze market trends. Something I can read and use to support my business plan.
Thanks! Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Something to think about: if a specific market opportunity is being talked about in magazines or on major websites, is it a very promising market opportunity ?
Posted by pH (Member # 1350) on :
Does your school have a subscription to MRI+/Mediamark? They have a whole ton of demographic information.
-pH
Posted by anti_maven (Member # 9789) on :
Are you loooking at any particular area? If you give a few more details about your chosen product/marketplace maybe I can give you some pointers.
Posted by Phanto (Member # 5897) on :
My school is pretty well off, and I've been enjoying the free articles at Nature and other medical journals. Hopefully MRI+/Mediamark will also work, thanks!
The general idea is selling arts/crafts/things made by people with problems in the local community and giving a portion of proceeds back.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Could you focus in more on who "people with problems in the local community" are?
Posted by Phanto (Member # 5897) on :
Sure.
Actually, that's a point of debate, and we really aren't sure as how we intend to explain our concept.
We are thinking of battered women, for instance, kids in juvenile rehab, and then on we're not sure. Homeless people, yes, and possibly felon art and art from mental institutes.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
You know, it occurs to me that being a business professor and getting teams of students to identify promising opportunities for you must be amazingly profitable.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
I suspect that unless you either tighten in on a fairly specific (and marketable) group out of those, you'll lose yourself in the confusion. Alternatively, you could try to identify a small group of artists among those communities, and use individual stories.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Tom: I suspect not so much. There are many, many opportunities out there, and a lot of them are fairly obvious. Followthrough is much scarcer than ideas.
Posted by Phanto (Member # 5897) on :
Absolutely, Tom. Ideas are very, very cheap...to quote a random venture capitalist, "I invest in people not ideas." And, "I'd rather have an A team with a C idea than a B team with a B idea." Some of the students in the last year did get VC funding and started a business; several groups in fact have started businesses based on this class's work.
fugu13: We do have various ideas for improving marketability. There is a key split in the group as to what group to market this, and we need to get some data to support our decisions. We will end up presenting to VCs, so this has to be good.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Mmmm, be careful with venture capitalism. A lot of old hands in the tech industry are warning against it, suggesting people work on gradually building up the business, and maybe taking angel funding. A lot of this is because VC investments typically come with a clause like, "we get the first $x of money from a sale of the business", leading to many people who founded businesses not getting much when they're sold. Also, VCs tend to be very demanding about how the business is run, which can prevent agility. One guy has made a blog about it: http://novcrequired.com/ . Go read the first few posts, in particular.
Also, I hope you're talking about your target market among customers.
As for data, just seeing data is unlikely to do anything for you. If the answers to marketing problems could be attained by randomly looking at data, everyone would do it . You need to come up with some fairly specific questions you want to answer before you can hope to get much out of the data.
Not that there isn't exploratory data analysis, but it typically requires a lot of time, specialized algorithms, and expertise.
Posted by TrapperKeeper (Member # 7680) on :
Thats exactly the sort of thing that my company does. Although by the end of the week isn't possible.
In a nutshell though, you would do best to identify who your current customers are in relationship to who lives in your trade area. Then find out what the population of your target trade area is like.
And of course look for competitors and such things.
Ack! This is a class!?!?! Well, half my post doesnt matter much to you then.
Posted by Phanto (Member # 5897) on :
Hehe .
Thanks, though, for sharing your company. In what capacity do you work there? It looks pretty successful .
fugu13: Yep; the professor made a specific note of talking about how, although normally you'd want to go through the 3fs first (friends, family, fools) then angels, we were to present as though we had already established a base and were ready to expand. I think the group that VC $ is one of those innovative internet networking things.
Posted by TrapperKeeper (Member # 7680) on :
I build linear regression models that will predict the sales of retailers when they open new locations.
We use data that we purchase in combination with the retailers sales data to understand what spatial factors around a business drive its sales and through that build a regression that can predict sales of new stores.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Out of curiosity, are advances in multilevel modeling that are slowly gaining momentum in the social sciences taking hold there, as well?
That's actually a pretty interesting topic.
Posted by TrapperKeeper (Member # 7680) on :
Fugu,
I have no idea
Posted by krynn (Member # 524) on :
ok, i apologize for not reading the whole page, but phanto there are loads of opportunities. China is huge right now. Is this a marketing class? if so, which one? if this is a college class, you can use any Market/Industry database to look at trends, like Hoovers or Lexus Nexus or Mergeant. or grab any Business Week or any other magazine to read about them.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
!
![[Wink]](wink.gif)