Fabulous Beyond Forty Club > Articles > Market Reseach For Success As Female Entrepreneurs
Market Research for Success As Female Entrepreneurs
Before establishing your business, to determine your niche market and whether your products and services are viable for a profitable, successful business, it is necessary to conduct market research.
The following strategy to research your target market will enable you to discover if you are on the right path.
Is the scope of your product or service local or global (national or international)?
Determine the demographics –
• Age: children, teens, young, middle, elderly
• Gender: male, female
• Education: high school, college, university
• Income: low, medium, high
• Marital status: single, married, divorced
• Ethnic and/or religious background
• Family life cycle: newly married, married for 10 – 20 years, with or without children.
Determine the psychographics -
• Lifestyle: conservative, exciting, trendy, economical
• Social class: lower, middle, upper
• Opinion: easily led or opinionated
• Activities and interests: sports, physical fitness, shopping, books
• Attitudes and beliefs: environmentalist, security conscious.
In addition, you may want to learn their purchase strategies: seasonally, locally, only in volume, who makes the decisions?
It is important to note that businesses, unlike individuals, buy products or services for three reasons only:
1. to increase revenue
2. to maintain the status quo
3. to decrease expenses
If you fill one or more of these corporate needs, you may have found a target market.
By now you should have a picture emerging of who you think your 'ideal' customer is … or who you want it to be. Depending on the nature of your business, you might even be able to write a description of your customer.
"My target customer is a middle-class woman in her 30s or 40s who is married, is a stay at home mum, has children, is environmentally conscious and physically fit." Based on the numbers you uncovered in your research, above, you may even know, for example, that there are approximately 9000 of those potential customers in your area! It may well be that 3000 of them are already loyal to a competitor, but that still leaves 6000 who are not, or who have not yet purchased the product from anyone.
Make sure you do the market research!
Be aware – there's a market, and a target market, for everything.
Fabulous Beyond Forty Club > Articles > Market Reseach For Success As Female Entrepreneurs