Market Insight: Conducting Market Research

Market research is the systematic process entrepreneurs use to gain insight into market problems and opportunities. The term market includes not only customers, but all players who are responsible for bringing certain products and services to market including suppliers, competitors, producers, wholesale distributors, retailers, logistics, and so on.

To conserve time and money, successful entrepreneurs minimize the resources they devote to researching their ideas. Unlike the corporate world, the entrepreneur only does as much research and analysis to justify the next action or investment. This course presents scores of best practice concerning how entrepreneurial research is actually implemented. Answers to questions about market segments, consumer and business markets, market size, and sales forecasts are all addressed through step-by-step processes.

Any entrepreneur should want to know as much as possible about any market they participate in. This course provides the guidance and resources necessary to develop just such a working knowledge.

Topics covered by this course include:

The market research process
The market environment
Researching your industry
Market segmentation and targeting
Researching consumers
Researching business customers
Estimating market size
Creating a sales forecast
Customer survey techniques
Consumption chain analysis

Course Objectives

To provide the process steps of conducting market research and the how the process differs for a small entrepreneurial venture as compared to a large corporation.

To provide the tools used to explore the external market environment, segment customers into target markets, and define the consumption chain for a customer segment.

To provide the secondary market data available for researching your industry, customers, industry size, and sales potential.

To provide the primary market research techniques used to answer specific marketing questions.

Course is approximately 3.0 hours to 3.5 hours in length and provides over 161 animated slides complete with voiceover narration.

Updated 7/8/2011 10:34:53 AM | tnayar

U.S. Small Business Administration, George Mason University, and America's SBDC

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