The author believes that when doing market analysis, market research companies must understand the market and guide the research work from the perspective of marketing. Don't think that no matter how the project is determined, it will be clear and the situation will be excellent. That mentality will lead to research for research's sake and research for results. As one of the series articles on finding out the misunderstandings in the research, this paper will start with the analysis of market potential and communicate with you on the misunderstandings and solutions that are easy to encounter in this link.
1. Not long ago, there was a case about wedding market analysis.
When we make a city's wedding market potential, according to the general market analysis method, we will estimate the total demand of the whole city's wedding market by combining the number of young people in the whole city, the average number of people getting married every year and the average total expenditure of each wedding. In this way, the data is huge, with billions allocated to each wedding company every year, and each company has at least tens of millions of markets. The prospect is very attractive, which makes people who want to enter the industry smile.
Actually, it's not. If you carefully observe the product chain of the wedding market, you will find that the product chain of the wedding market is extremely broad. From wedding planning, wedding rental, car rental, photo album, live camera to hotels, gifts, wedding ceremonies and other fields, no company can provide all the services, and no customer is willing to hand them over to a company, because a wedding is like a lady shopping, and the picture is the fun of that process. As a participant in the wedding market, you should carefully analyze which product area your resources are concentrated in, and you must not cover everything. Then you should start to analyze how big the demand in this market segment is, so as not to be aimless. After this round, you may have to struggle in millions of markets.
As we all know, the whole market of a product can be subdivided because of the different needs of consumers or users. There are many variables that cause the difference in consumer demand. In practice, enterprises generally use related variables to segment the market, rather than using a single variable. To sum up, there are four variables in subdividing the consumer market, namely, geographical variables, demographic variables, psychological variables and behavioral variables. According to these variables, four basic forms of market segmentation have emerged: geographical segmentation, demographic segmentation, psychological segmentation and behavioral segmentation.
2. Collect data correctly
When analyzing the market potential, we often consider the macro-level reference factors such as industry development, regional economy, culture and policy, and collect a lot of data. Customers who haven't done industry research often don't know which data is decisive for market potential. In fact, market personnel who know the composition of various indexes should be basically clear. For example, GDP basically shows the development level of a region and cannot show the living standards of people in this region. Per capita savings and per capita disposable income can show the purchasing power of residents in this area, and other data can be used for reference. The analysis of market potential can only collect different data according to the target products and target customer groups for reference.
In the process of marketing consultation, we often find that the market research that customers know better is the research on the consumer market, so they often ask how many consumer questionnaires are needed to determine the market potential. In fact, sometimes, the basic purchasing power of this region can be roughly understood by industry research without too precise data.
I have contacted a customer before, and it is a well-known enterprise that makes management software. I want to expand distribution channels nationwide, but I don't know how to choose a point according to the market potential, and the budget of this project is not high enough to support a large-scale nationwide questionnaire survey. I helped him consider a way: as long as we collect and improve the following data, we can basically confirm the general distribution of sales potential in the country, including the development data of secondary industry in cities across the country, the number of large and medium-sized enterprises with annual sales of 5 million yuan according to urban distribution, and the academic qualifications of entrepreneurs or senior managers according to urban basic distribution. These data can be obtained directly from the national statistical data (the statistical caliber of individual regions is inconsistent and needs to be unified). According to these data, we basically have a perceptual understanding of the distribution of dealers.
Another point that must be noted is that macro analysis cannot be ignored in any market analysis. It can be exaggerated to say that macro analysis and industry analysis are the premise of all market analysis. I remember that when the price competition in the color TV industry was extremely fierce, some experts focused on analyzing the reasons such as product homogeneity and innovation. Do you know that the reason for the competition in the color TV industry is that the market is saturated and the supply exceeds demand, which will inevitably lead to low-level price competition? However, industry analysis is often the most difficult research aspect in the whole market research field. Many people think that as long as we have a simple perceptual knowledge and look at the information on the Internet, it is a macro-environmental analysis. Actually, that's not the case at all. Industry environment is often the basis of whether an enterprise can finally win, but there are too many factors involved, and the research of analysis model also needs the support of a large number of basic data. Many consulting companies are also retreating to do more standardized and operational consumer research fields.
3. High-quality data When some enterprises do market capacity analysis, they often unconsciously raise market potential expectations because of their enthusiasm for this project.
The performance in some estimated data is obviously much higher than the realization. The reason is often deliberately raised according to personal feelings or should be so. The result is, of course, huge potential, strong demand and high return on investment. There used to be a customer who made hotel washing products. When calculating the market potential of a single city, according to the usual market forecasting method, we use the data such as the number of rooms in a single hotel, the occupancy rate of rooms in a single hotel and the average number of rooms in all hotels in the city to calculate the usage. In this process, the customer occupancy rate is often artificially increased or completely ignored, which is subconsciously considered as 100%. In fact, in normal times, the occupancy rate is very low, so the whole data will be high. If the hotel occupancy rate is determined by the marketing of washing products, then this prediction has some basis, but it is often not the case, so we can only analyze the data according to an objective attitude.
In the process of market research, the most important point is quality control. Why quality control is needed is because there are human factors in the data collected in the process of market research. This human factor is big when it is big, and small when it is small. If the data of a single sample is too large, the whole result will completely deviate from the real situation of the market, and the purpose of quality control is to enable researchers to objectively estimate the real value of the market, so as to make correct decisions for market strategists. Especially in a country with a large population like ours, any small data will become very huge after the multiplication of 654.38 billion people across the country. Not long ago, there was a joke that if everyone in the country bought an aspirin, the demand would be large enough to make a person a billionaire. Marketing, that is to say, the market remains unchanged, and the key lies in how to do marketing. Of course, how to tap the market in the process of marketing is another matter.
Since the situation remains the same, it is necessary to objectively analyze the market. If the marketing decision is based on a false market data, we must question the correctness of marketing.
4. Avoid pure data analysis. Pure data analysis is to predict data only from data.
On the surface, it is very scientific. Many market researchers strive for the correctness of the data, and then predict the future market potential according to the well-known analysis methods such as least square method, factor analysis and cluster analysis. This forecasting method can often win the trust of customers. Actually, it's all wet. If we can only use data to analyze in the future, there will be no blowout in the automobile industry in 2002, and many industries will not have extraordinary development.
In our opinion, it is meaningless to predict data simply by data. The market is changeable and irregular. For some traditional industries with a high degree of marketization, such as catering and clothing, because the market demand has basically balanced supply and demand, big market innovations no longer appear. It is feasible for such a market to make a simple prediction with data, but for some industries, such as enterprises, some machinery industries, real estate, IT or a completely new industry, these industries are either not completely marketized, or have huge opportunities for change, or there is no balance between supply and demand. In the final analysis, there are still huge market opportunities in these industries, and the pattern of the whole industry may be completely subverted overnight. At this time, if we only use data to predict data, we will be laughed at.
Many researchers will think that qualitative research is much more difficult than quantitative research, because qualitative research contains too many uncertain factors. Only when we fully understand the development process of the industry, understand the industrial chain status of the industry, understand the opportunities and prospects of the industry, and combine the current market situation to make a more reasonable forecast of the future market. This prediction is more scientific than simple data prediction. The above points are easy to understand, but they are common mistakes made by many market analysts. Only by paying attention to every detail can we make an objective analysis of the current market potential, and then marketing decisions will not be passive water.