Mesin Pencari Otomatis Rossi

Friday, March 27, 2009

Market Intelligence

If you are managing a business of any size, large or small, you need to understand both your customers and your competitors – and for this you need market intelligence. You have to decide where to grow your business, where you may need to cut back when times are tough, or where to change your emphasis according to trends and fashions.
The questions for which you need to find answers begin with ‘who’, ‘where’, and ‘why’. Who purchases your product? Better yet, who uses it and who decides to purchase it (these may be two different people). Who buys the product from your competitor?
You need to know where your product is used and what benefits customers seek from it. Where do they look for information about it? Online? In newspapers and magazines? Word of mouth? Is the product likely to be bought on impulse, or will most people research it carefully before spending money on your product? Then it is necessary to know how much people are prepared to pay for your product, especially in comparison with your competitor’s product. The answers to all these questions are important as you manage the marketing side of your business.
How to find the answers depends on the types of questions you need to ask.
You can find out facts using questions that only need "yes" or "no" as an answer; for example, "Does your household own more than one car?" This sort of question tells you about consumption, but not much more. Some facts rely on memory, for example, "Have you heard of chicken-flavored ice cream?" The answers here will tell you about product knowledge. Opinions give you an idea of the motives people have for buying things. A question like, "Why do you think red apples taste better than green apples?" can help you understand more about customer preference. Attitudes are hardest of all to work out – but they are the most valuable to determine, since they help us understand why people buy products.
Statistics can provide demographic data. Census data for household expenditure can help you build a profile of the market you are attempting to supply and will help you work out the ages of your local population, and other details such as its ethnic composition, average household income, size of the average family and so on. Various trade organizations are another good source of up-to-date data.
Surveys of your customers, established and potential, provide the most valuable data. There are many sorts of survey: three important methods are interviews, telephone surveys and online surveys.
Interviews should be kept brief and to the point – people are busy. This method depends on sampling a small number of people who represent the total group you want to research. You can ask some structured questions at point of sale, or employ market research companies, which are adept at this type of survey.
Telephone surveys may be met with a reluctance to respond and you may get a biased sample coming from only those people who are willing to take part in the survey. They can be costly and time-consuming.
Online surveys suffer from the fact that people can express their opinions anonymously. This can lead to a lot of ‘noise’ in the results, but if you provide an incentive (some sort of prize) and allow participation only by people who have been through some sort of screening process, greater accuracy can be obtained. Again, keep it simple.
Unfortunately, market intelligence is unable to predict the future, but it will help you find out where you stand and what your best strategy should be for the present.

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