Basic Business Questions

[CharlieB]

Hi

I've just got a couple of basic questions I really could do with the answer for.

How do you find how big a market is?

(At the moment i'm seeing business as quite wooly in the way that you don't always know who is in your market, are there any services to show you this for sure producing a sort of league table similar to those used in sports)

How do you find if a market is growing?

(For this one i've been told to use compete.com to see if the number of hits a website gets is growing but is there a way of monitoring sales? Could I get this from the company's accounts?)

Thanks

Charlie

[rogercbryan]

Yikes... these are very basic yet complex questions. For most markets a quick google search will give you 95% of what you need. You are talking about market research which is something people don't do enough of.

Start here: SWOT analysis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A SWOT Analysis will help you get started.

[CharlieB]

Hi Roger,

Im trying to test out a few ideas ive come up with to see if they're viable business opportunities. Just wondering if there's a gap in the market for a service that monitors all the companies in a specific industry to find all the firms competing for specific products and then calculates the market share based on sales from their accounts. Do you know if there are any services out there like this?

[Manny4life]

Use the services of a research firm. Most research firm research, analyse, produce data and conclude on various market and consumer activity; Micro and Macro. If you into sports, find the one for sports, you would be surprised at how much information you receive but this is for a premium fee. From all you explained, only a research or consulting firm can conclusively and almost accurately pull numbers together, determine an aggregate, perform statistical analysis to determine one's estimated market share. Reason due to they could use few variables to simulate different scenarios, my advice seek out a good research firm.

[rogercbryan]

Hi Roger,

Im trying to test out a few ideas ive come up with to see if they're viable business opportunities. Just wondering if there's a gap in the market for a service that monitors all the companies in a specific industry to find all the firms competing for specific products and then calculates the market share based on sales from their accounts. Do you know if there are any services out there like this?

There is not a gap in this... it's a multi-billion dollar industry... This is the main reason big name consulting firms exist.