hello from jason

[supremeone77]

hey, can someone help me with this? i'm doing a project on this for school, and my business idea is a daycare center. The main thing I need help with is the market research, like finding out the industry growth and trends and current demand. Any ideas? Not sure if I only national level information is available for that or you can find it out by state or city too. Thanks

[jackzliu]

Hey Jason,
Nice to have you on the forum. The best market research you can do is... talk to people. You must know some people who have kids. Ask them what they're experience is with previous day care centers. What did they like and what they didn't like. From that, you should be able to carve a niche with your daycare center. Industry growth and trends are great, but they don't bring in customers. Talking to customers is much closer to bringing revenue than finding out trends. Don't get me wrong- reading trends is great but that's considered secondary research. Primary research, in this case talking to customers is still the best.

[supremeone77]

ya, i know what you're saying but this is a hypothetical business, and you need to work with secondary research for the most part. Need to find out more about startup expenses like licensing fees and insurance etc. And have to buy a bunch of supplies and work on the financial part. It's just hard for me since the class i'm in is an online class for Strategic Management and we never worked with any type of financial stuff or research type stuff before this assignment, besides when we had to do initial research in our industry.

[Dave89]

Visit your local public library and they should be able to assist with any research. When I was preparing for start-up they were very helpful in providing me with valuable information in regards to market research, market share, competitive analysis, industry trends, etc. Ask if they have a small business or research center. I wouldn't tell them it was for a school project, tell them that you are actually planning to open a daycare center so this way they take it more seriously. Hope this helps.

Dave