MOST Analysis

Mission Statement

Simply described, a market opportunity is a gap in the market. Something, someone, or some place that isn’t being serviced by other businesses that you may take advantage of and exploit to expand your company swiftly. However, it is simpler said than done. Everyone is striving for the same spot and searching for that extra, unheard-of thing to put them ahead of the competition. How therefore can you identify a promising market opportunity before your rivals do? And once you have one, how do you go about creating an effective business growth strategy? Four crucial factors come into play when determining a promising market potential for your company: What do consumers want or need? What, more crucially, is your competition NOT doing? How does your product address a specific issue? or strengthen an existing remedy? What is the market like right now? Following the completion of these inquiries, you ought to be in a better position to comprehend your target market, spot product flaws, and ultimately find untapped markets. At the end of the exercise, you also need to understand the profit potential of the opportunity, which normally is arrived at by estimating the gross margin over a period of time.

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Objectives

01. Identify Strengths and Weaknesses: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
02. Purchase Situation Analysis: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
03. Direct Competition Analysis: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
04. Indirect Competition Analysis: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
05. Analysis of Complementary Products and Services: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
06. Analysis of other Industries: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
07. Foreign Markets Analysis: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. 1 Month
08. Environmental Analysis: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
09. Listen to your Customers: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
10. Consumer Segmentation: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
11. Spot Acute Unsolved Problems: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
12. Profit Potential: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month

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Strategies

01. Identify Strengths and Weaknesses: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
02. Purchase Situation Analysis: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
03. Direct Competition Analysis: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
04. Indirect Competition Analysis: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
05. Analysis of Complementary Products and Services: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
06. Analysis of other Industries: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
07. Foreign Markets Analysis: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
08. Environmental Analysis: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
09. Listen to your Customers: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
10. Consumer Segmentation: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
11. Spot Acute Unsolved Problems: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
12. Profit Potential: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.

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Tasks

01. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Identify Strengths and Weaknesses.
02. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Purchase Situation Analysis.
03. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Direct Competition Analysis.
04. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Indirect Competition Analysis.
05. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Analysis of Complementary Products and Services.
06. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Analysis of other Industries.
07. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Foreign Markets Analysis.
08. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Environmental Analysis.
09. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Listen to your Customers.
10. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Consumer Segmentation.
11. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Spot Acute Unsolved Problems.
12. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Profit Potential.

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Introduction

Every company needs to know who they are, where they fit into the market, and where they’re going. Only 33% of businesses make it past their tenth year after starting out, while only 66% survive their first two years.

What does it thus take to locate the ideal market opportunities and create a development plan that gets you where you want to go?

What is a market opportunity?

Simply described, a market opportunity is a gap in the market. Something, someone, or some place that isn’t being serviced by other businesses that you may take advantage of and exploit to expand your company swiftly.

However, it is simpler said than done. Everyone is striving for the same spot and searching for that extra, unheard-of thing to put them ahead of the competition.

How therefore can you identify a promising market opportunity before your rivals do? And once you have one, how do you go about creating an effective business growth strategy?

How to identify a good market opportunity

Identifying a good market opportunity for your business boils down to four key areas:

1. What do consumers want/need?
2. What is your competition doing, or more importantly, NOT doing?
3. How can your product solve a particular problem? Or compliment a pre-existing solution?
4. What is the current state of the market?

Following the completion of these inquiries, you ought to be in a better position to comprehend your target market, spot product flaws, and ultimately find untapped markets.

Let’s look at some of the methods you might use to respond to the following four questions.

How to use consumer data analysis to identify market opportunities

The first thing you need to do is figure out who exactly you are selling to. Knowing your audience is essential to assisting you in discovering a new market opportunity, whether you are doing customer surveys, analyzing data from your own website, or using third-party research.

Customer reviews and surveys analysis

Asking your consumers directly is one of the finest methods to find out who they are and what they want from your company. Customer feedback and surveys may provide you with valuable information about every facet of your company, from what clients think of your goods and services to how well your website and customer care department run.

Even though analyzing all of this feedback can be time-consuming, there are tools available to help. Sentiment analysis software can automatically determine the feelings underlying each comment and find recurring patterns in your comments. For instance, you can learn that multiple consumers have brought up a product’s flaw or that they feel your service falls short when it comes to after-sale support.

You may use the information you learn from your reviews and surveys to enhance your offerings, customer service, and brand perception. You must choose what you want to take away from your feedback and how you will apply it moving ahead.

Identifying consumer segments

Examine your current audience and divide it into groups according to characteristics you find common. These can be hard demographic variables that can be used to estimate market size, such as age, gender, geography, income, occupation, etc. You may find out why individuals would purchase your items by analyzing “softer” factors like attitudes, lifestyle, and personal values. These factors can affect everything from price to design.

Creating customer personas

After segmenting your audience, you should become a little more specific and create some distinct client profiles. Customer personas are a more thorough breakdown of the many customer types most likely to patronize your company. For instance, a toy store might include personas for parents, children, grandparents, and so on.

If it helps, you can give each of these personalities a name, age, and personality. The more real-looking they are, the simpler it will be to start relating to them on an emotional level. Personas make it simple for everyone in your company to understand the motives, potential pain areas, and ways in which your company may assist your target customer.

Based on actual clients, create each of your personalities. You may go deeper into who has purchased from you in the past and why by using surveys, feedback, and site analytics. In the long run, your business growth strategy will benefit from personas more if they are accurate.

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Market opportunity examples across the world: Starbucks

When it comes to illustrating the failures of worldwide expansion, Starbucks has been virtually every expert’s go-to case study. Its failed attempt to dominate the Australian scene resulted in the closure of almost 70% of its outlets.

But another American coffee shop, Gloria Jean’s, did well in Australia.

It was a case of Starbucks not knowing how to make their brand relevant, not knowing how Australians loved their ambiance, and not being able to offer a menu that was palatable to the general populace.

Purchasing pattern analysis

Until you know how frequently and how much a consumer is likely to spend with you, you cannot assess the potential value of a new market opportunity. Your target audience’s frequency, amount, and value of purchases are revealed by their buying behaviors.

Key inquiries to make are:

• When do customers purchase our goods or services?
• When they need it, is it there?
• Where do people make the purchase?
• How are payments made?

Types of buying pattern

Every consumer purchase falls into one of the following categories:

How to carry out purchasing pattern analysis

Consumers often go through five stages when making any purchase, regardless of the pattern they fall into. It’s crucial to comprehend each of them to determine where and how your company fits in.

1. Problem recognition

When a consumer realizes they either need or want to buy something, this is when it happens. They might require new headphones because their old ones broke, or they might decide to update their existing set of headphones since a new model just came out.

2. Collect information

At this point, buyers start to learn more about the products they might buy from a variety of sources, such as asking for suggestions, reading reviews, speaking with salespeople, clicking on advertisements, and more.

3. Evaluate alternatives

Consumers will have a number of options to pick from in terms of the kind of product or service and the brand or company after doing their research. Consider purchasing headphones as an example. The buyer will need to determine the brand they want to purchase as well as the sort of headphones they want (in-ear, wireless, or over-ear) (Sony, Bose, Beats, etc.).

They will evaluate the benefits, costs, and features of each good or service during this stage of the process in order to make a choice.

4. Final buying decision

Time to make or break! The consumer will now make a final decision regarding the good or service they’re going to acquire, albeit they also have the option of choosing not to do so! If they do decide to move further, they will additionally think about the location, timing, and mode of their intended purchase.

5. Post-purchase evaluation

The last stage is the most crucial if you want to keep your consumers. After making a transaction from you, did your consumer express satisfaction with it? Do they know who to call if they require assistance?

Asking for feedback at this point is a wonderful approach to assess how easy the consumers’ entire purchasing process was for them as well as to uncover any problems with the product or service so you can address them quickly and keep the client satisfied.

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2. How to use product analysis to identify market opportunities

Product analysis can take many different shapes, but to put it simply, it is enquiring about and gathering feedback on your product. You can get information from a variety of sources for this, such as focus groups, current customers, and industry or product specialists. Almost any step of the design process is a good time to conduct a product analysis.

Evaluating your existing products using consumer feedback

Finding and analyzing customer reviews of items is a terrific approach to receive insightful feedback on both new and existing products. Sentiment analysis tools can highlight the positive and negative aspects of your product so you can quickly see what is working well and what needs to be improved.

When you know which products are popular with your customers and are receiving positive reviews, you can choose to concentrate on expanding the lines of these products, or you can switch up your marketing strategy by emphasizing the aspects of your products that your target market finds most appealing.

Evaluating complimentary or new product launches

You should be watching not just your own items but also those of others. Your growth strategy will be greatly influenced by how well items that complement your own perform. You must stay current with current trends in order to comprehend how these complementary items might impact you.

For example, if you make printers, you should monitor paper sales because more and more companies are putting a premium on sustainability. If you see a dip, you’ll need to either come up with a different plan of action or modify your growth approach.

But it’s vital to keep in mind that it’s not just passively monitoring how other people fare. Building connections and collaborating with like-minded companies might actually help your clients and open up new market prospects.

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