Starting a Business After Graduation – Marketing Research Essay
Making a good career decision involves both self-assessment and market research. Begin the self-assessment process by examining your skills and identifying what kinds of products or services you can offer. What skills do you most enjoy using? If you are artistic, merchandising a store and designing advertising may appeal to you. Or you may be mechanically inclined, enjoy solving puzzles or helping people.
All businesses require dedication, determination, passion, flexibility and urgency. Consumers today have a wonderful sense of well-being and wealth, but you should be prepared for a sharp or extended decline. There are all sorts of things that can turn people away from shopping, so plan for good times as well as rocky ones. If you want to get into a retail business because times are good, you may want to think again. If your passion for going out on your own and dealing directly with the public is not extinguished by the prospect of difficult times.
I planned to retail a fashion store with a specialty retailer. Which is a power retailers like target tend to sell “needs,” specialty retailers tend to sell “wants.” They focus more on neighbourhood convenience, the richness of the shopping experience, and inventory that meets the needs of their target customer on a personalized basis. Small stores show surprising strength and flexibility in the face of competition from large-scale retailers and e-commerce outlets. They offer the consumer a warmer atmosphere, and perhaps a broader and deeper selection of goods.
Many stores can be owned and operated by one person with minimal assistance. Compared to manufacturing operations, specialty retail outfits are relatively easy to start both financially and operationally. However, a number of failures are due to undercapitalization, poor location and insufficient market analysis.
Most successful small businesses provide something attractive or advantageous by taking what’s already there and developing some innovative features. I will develop a special community consciousness which is to full fill my customer’s need. Example, if they have any special banquet, they could me order or propose what kind of material for their unique dressing and their design as well.
Although a great location may not guarantee success, a bad location will almost always guarantee failure. A new retail business needs to be where the customers are. I need to find a location with a reasonable degree of security, access to public transportation for your customers and employees, adequate parking for commercial as well as personal vehicles, room for an office, and that all-important sales space. Where you locate will settle on the hours you keep, who your clients is, and what types of promotions you do. Also, where you set up shop will impact how long it will take you to grow. Luckily, I have lots of options.
The best retail location combines visibility, affordability and lease terms that I can live with. Retailers need to be where the action is, so deciding where to put my business is every bit as important as the business that I decide to go into.
Take the time to analyze the areas that appeal to me. There are three phases of choosing a location for your retail business: selection of a city, choice of an area or type of location within a city, and identification of a specific site.
The place I choose for my fashion store which is a new shop house beside the road. Because it is a new shop lot so I think every passenger pass by will be have a look on that. There will no traffic flow, corresponding nature of next-door stores, capability of packing problem. There will be no zoning changes that will be advantageous for competitor or even allow new competitors to enter your trade area.
I will take my positioning statement from my business plan and present it in the 3-D world of location, architecture and interior design. Use scale, colours, textures, materials, amenities and layout to express my store’s philosophy. I will use a neon, elegant columns and casual corners, subdued hues and marble floors to set the stage for my customers.
My store has planned two key elements: store design and store layout. Store design is concerned with atmosphere, image, interior design and exterior design factors. Store layout involves the internal arrangements of each department, selling and sales support allocation, and the evaluation of space productivity.
To set up my store, consider consulting with architects, interior designers and lighting engineers. Working with skilful designers gives me an invaluable resource: Not only will they know the best location for air conditioners and elevators, but they can help build flexibility into lighting systems that will keep me from incur costs when floor layouts are altered. Designers keep abreast of the hottest colour schemes, materials, sources and trends to a degree that would be impossible for someone outside the trades to do.
For my own opinion, to make my own business success, there is a lot of market segmentation I need to know which is:-
? Sensitive to prices changes
If we are not sensitive with this, our customer might be get a more special offer from my competitor
In making your pricing decisions, you need to answer these questions:
? What prices are shoppers willing to pay for the merchandise?
? Where do you want to be in comparison with your competitors’ pricing: equal, above or below?
? What is the suggested real price proposed by the supplier?
? What are the qualities or characteristics of the merchandise that influence a shopper’s perception of quality and value-style, perish ability, scarcity, richness, commodity or other?
? Packaging and pop display
This is the most important passion to my customers. Through the packaging we can know that what the quality of material in the shop is and so on.
? What are the consumer psychological characteristics?
What is my customers’ feeling, sentiments, buying motives and behavioural patterns and designs?
? Product-variety marketing
Produces how to move products that have different quality features, styles, size and so on.
? Target marketing
Select one or more of them, develops products and marketing mixes tailored to each.
This is making few same design or same colour dressing from them to attend those unique banquets.
Other that that, the promotional mix also I need to be more aware. Advertising and personal selling such as point of purchase display, exhibition, usually non-recurring in nature.
? Introduction
Heavy advertising and public relations to build awareness.
? Growth
Heavy advertising and public relations to build brand loyalty.
Decreasing use of sales promotion. Personal selling to maintain distribution.
? Product research
Which is concern with the analysis of the strengths and weakness of the existing products, development of new products, product diversification and all kinds of product line decision?
? Media research
Broucher, flyer, banner and streamer
? Consumer research
This is concerned with the discovery and analysis of the consumer.
? Sales research
This relates to the problem of regional variations in sales, fixing sales territories, measurement of effectiveness of sales force, evaluation of sales method.