Untitled Quiz

Marketing Analysis: Understanding Your Environment

• This analysis informs business decisions.
• Understanding the business environment is crucial.

Why Study the Business Environment?

• To survive and thrive, companies must evolve and adapt.
• Innovation is key to seeing change as an opportunity, rather than a threat.
• Differentiation is essential to stand out from competitors.

Evolve & Adapt

• Companies must respond to change.
• This involves observing, analysing, and anticipating the environment.
• Key decisions must enhance strengths and minimise weaknesses.

Innovate

• Innovation involves translating inventions into valuable products and services for customers.
• Innovating solutions must be economically sound and meet specific customer needs.

Differentiate

• Uniqueness makes a product or service more attractive to target customers.
• Demonstrating unique aspects of a product creates a sense of value.
• Understanding customer preferences is essential.

Definition of Marketing

• The science and art of identifying, creating, and delivering customer value profitably.
• Understanding the importance of customer needs and preferences.

Role of Marketing

• Identifying customers and their needs.
• Satisfying those needs through appropriate products and services.
• Retaining customers by offering valuable experiences and incentives.

The Marketing Process

• Foresight to understand customer movements is vital for proactive positioning.

Situation Analysis (Internal & External)

• A thorough examination of internal and external factors affecting a business.
• A crucial step in marketing analysis for a comprehensive understanding of future influences.

Internal Analysis

• Crucial for understanding a company's strengths and weaknesses.
• Key stakeholders (managers, supervisors, customers) contribute to this analysis.
• Analysis includes: company culture, expertise, unique qualities, and resources.

Questions to Determine Your Strengths & Weaknesses

• Questions are used to identify the strengths and weaknesses of a company.
• This process allows for areas of improvement and better defining of a firm's attributes.

External Analysis

• This analysis encompasses macro and micro elements.
• Macro environment is the larger, uncontrollable economic and political systems that affect the entire business.
• Micro environment includes market-specific factors like competitors and consumer trends.

SWOT Analysis

• A SWOT analysis summarizes internal strengths and weaknesses, and external opportunities and threats.

PESTEL Analysis

• A framework for analyzing the macro environment (political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal factors).
• It supports understanding of a business environment's trends.

Market Intelligence

• The practice of gathering and analyzing external information to understand a specific market.
• It enables informed investment decisions.
• It can include competitive intelligence and consumer insights.

Types of Market Research

• Secondary research (desk research) utilizes existing data from sources like reports, studies, or surveys.
• Primary research collects and analyzes original data through interviews, surveys, or experiments.

Organizing Data Collection

• Overall objective is to become an expert about the macro and micro environment.

Advantages of Secondary Research

• Quick and affordable means of understanding market dynamics.
• Useful for defining a problem and creating an overview.

Advantages of Primary Research

• Tailor made for specific questions & answers.
• Unique information that is not readily obtainable through secondary research.
• Enables a company to gather specific insights into a market.

Key DOs & DON'Ts for Research

• Do reference all sources accurately and use reliable sources.
• Do study all relevant markets, do not rely on limited internet sources.
• Do not confuse the vocabulary/types of research.

What is a Market?

• A market is an environment where buyers and sellers interact to trade goods, services, or ideas for money.

Market Mechanisms

• Mechanisms for determining prices, communicating information, facilitating transactions, and effecting distribution in a market.

Win-Win Market Exchange

• A clearly defined need in the market.
• A corresponding supply.
• Voluntary exchange with mutual benefit.

The Market Study Composition

• Competitors, distributors, suppliers, market structure and statistics, buyers, consumers/end users, and influencers.

Purpose of Market Analysis

• Summarizing information about markets, customers, competitors.
• Avoiding decision-making errors by understanding potential.
• Defining any knowledge gaps and addressing those gaps.
• Making strategic decisions about which markets to serve.

Analyzing Market Structure

• Levels of competition to analyze.
• Ease of entry into a particular market.
• Customer types (eg. B2B, B2C, C2C).
• Market scope.
• Geographic spread of customers.

Market Attractiveness & Growth Potential

• Assessing value or sales volume in a market.
• The future development potential of a market.
• Market life cycle assessment (emerging, established, declining).
• First-time buyers vs. repeat buyers.

Seasonality of Sales

• Understanding seasonal sales fluctuations for products with distinct sales patterns.

Quantitative Indicators

• Market share, sales volume, sales value, and growth trends.
• These indicators provide insights into a company's market position and performance.

Finding Opportunities via Market Research

• Analysis of relevant industries (eg. market growth in specific transport modes).

Keys to Successful Market Analysis

• Using reliable, up-to-date statistics.
• Effectively referencing sources.
• Recognizing and considering the broader market perspective.

Analysis of Distribution Channels

• An evaluation of the current distribution methods used for goods and services within a market.
• Identifying opportunities and making effective decisions about the appropriate channels given the target audience.

Geographic Market Coverage

• Determining the area from which customers are drawn to a particular store.
• Identifying suitable market areas for a store or service.
• Considering factors such as population density, proximity to competitors, and infrastructure.

Analysis of Market Demand

• Identifying consumers/buyers and influential factors influencing demands.

Defining Actual and Potential Demand

• Understanding consumers' willingness to buy a given product or service based on their individual desires.

Analysis of Consumer Behavior

• Understanding consumers' attitudes, behavior patterns, and perceptions.

Different Roles Within the Buyer Decision Process

• Consumers often take different roles (decider, buyer, user).
• Recognizing these distinct roles within a consumer buying group is crucial for marketing strategies.

Role of Influencers

• Individuals who can influence consumer choices and perceptions.

Social Factors (affecting consumer behavior)

• Understanding social factors that influence consumer choices. 
• Examining societal characteristics (culture, subcultures, subculture, social class, and family, and reference groups)

How to Do Qualitative Research

• Using various methods (detailed interviews, focus groups, observation) to understand customer needs and insights.

Focus Group Research

• Assembling a group of individuals (around 8-10) with similar experiences.
• Having a trained facilitator to guide discussion and understanding motivations.
• Studying the interaction and insights.
• Analyzing findings to understand a product, consumer behavior, or to form a hypothesis for quantitative studies.

Direct Observation Research

• A study method that involves observing and recording consumer behavior and actions.
• This approach involves understanding consumer behavior and gathering data about their actions rather than spoken responses.

Different Types of Closed Questions

• Identifying different types of questions used to structure quantitative and qualitative research.

Qualitative Data Analysis

• Understanding techniques to analyze qualitative (non-numerical) data collected from the field.
• Identifying themes, patterns, and relationships.

Analyzing Qualitative Data Formats (e.g., Vertical Analysis, Horizontal Analysis)

• Using different methods for analyzing qualitative findings like horizontal or vertical analysis.
• Identifying trends within the data, understanding differences etc.

Market Research Process

• Step 1: Defining the problem.
• Step 2: Defining the research objective.
• Step 3: Creating a flexible research plan.
• Step 4: Gathering and collecting the specific information needed from the defined plan.
• Step 5: Analyzing the gathered information.
• Step 6: Presenting the findings and recommendations.
• Step 7: Making the decision.