Business start-up market research

[mammadon]

Hi everybody.

I am looking engage in a start-up, in three main areas. The first area is a sandwich bar, but selling specialty/gourmet sandwiches (not standard ones like Subway). Cooking is a hobby of mine, and of course business concerns should align with interests and hobbies one has.

The second is a mobile phone retailer, operating independently of an established telephony provider (similar to say the Carphone Warehouse in the UK). So in essence I would be an alternative channel/intermediary for networks. I am a tech-minded person, and I really into smartphones a lot.

The third opportunity I am pondering is being a political advisor, as I like following political issues. I plan to operate in a freelance sense, or start a small practice and offer advise/counsel to those in office.

The major stumbling block I have though is fully evaluating these ideas in my region. I live in Mauritius, and there are not many sources of primary research on the island. I have asked some market research companies to compile some primary research for me, but this has proven too expensive. I would like to put together my own market research, but for a start-up how can this be done?


Thanks

[FlorianMettetal]

I'm going to assume you understand that you should write a business plan for the business idea you select, and that the true obstacle you are having with any of these three (3) businesses is that you cannot acquire adequate marketing data to support your assumptions.

There are two (2) types of marketing data, primary and secondary marketing data. Secondary marketing data is the type you find from census.gov or any other online resources. Primary marketing data is data that is collected directly from a potential consumer.

To obtain Primary Marketing data this is what you need to do:

1) Define your target market
2) Develop a simple (no more than 10-question) survey using 1-5 rankings involving key factors of the success of your business
3) Implement the survey - Yes, go out on the street corner (as BusinessWithSuccess suggested) and ask pedestrians walking in the area of each of your desired locations.

[marketest]

If you do your primary research yourself, be careful to be objective and to do it regardless of what you think.

Then, make sure you are surveying the right target market, in an objective way again.

[wiggy21]

Why don't you go down a franchise route? already a proven business model

[JKansas]

Florian is right, if you can't find it on the internet using exiting data, then you have to go out and get it yourself. Be objective, don't just ask family and friends, and make the survey as simple and effective as possible. It really takes some prep to do but it should be with it in the end.

For my business I used existing information, government surveys, public information, things like that. This probably doesnt exist for you unless you find that a national sandwhich shop has done a survey and released it.