From: paradis@sousa.ltn.dec.com (Jim Paradis)
Newsgroups: misc.entrepreneurs
Subject: Market research - a missing ingredient?
Date: 8 Sep 92 19:29:16 GMT
Reply-To: paradis@sousa.ltn.dec.com (Jim Paradis)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation



This exchange was dragged over from misc.jobs.misc.  Over there the
discussion turned to working-from-home, and I bemoaned the fact that
if I wanted to work from home I'd have to start my own busines because
there are very few companies who are willing to hire homebased workers
(or so it seems).  I then stated that not all of us have what it takes
to start a business, and that in particular one of my nightmares is
hanging out my shingle and getting *ZERO* business.  I said that the
notion of "If you build it, they will come" does not apply to business.
One of the replies reads, in part:

In article <1992Sep6.202017.20257@dartvax.dartmouth.edu>, waltervj@coos.dartmouth.edu (Walter V. Jeffries) writes:
>Actually, I have found in my quite extensive experience (15 years of 
>working for myself) that this last bit *IS* true.  They *DO* come.
>Now, you must do some marketing to let people know about your product,
>but that is part of building it.  I do *VERY* minimal marketing of the
>products I develop and our production is running at 100% of
>capacity and always have some backlog *BECAUSE* "they do come". It won't
>be easy.  You'll have to work very, very hard, but if you do good 
>market research, good product development, good marketing, and good
>production, you stand a good chance of doing well. There is no guarantee,
>and there is no one way to do it.  You'll also need a very healthy
>dose of optimisim to keep you going through the hard parts.

Well, he makes it sound so easy!

This has been an issue that's been bugging me for a while, and it's
one of the things that's kept me from going into business -- namely,
how on earth *do* you research a market to find out if indeed "they
will come"?

Whenever I read "opportunity" magazines or read the "business opportunities"
section of the classifieds, I find myself besieged with offers to "Get in
on the ground floor of a profitable bu$ine$$!!!".  Dozens of companies are
all to willing to sell me the trappings and paraphernalia of a business,
but nowhere do I see any guidance as to whether a particular business will
in fact have a market or not.

Just the other day, I was walking through the mall, and I saw a guy with
a pushcart and a computer portrait setup on it.  It seemed pretty obvious
to me that he'd had little if any business all day, and I figured he must've
read one of those "business opportunity" ads, bought the goodies, and only
*then* discovered that the market really wasn't there for his product,
at least not at that particular mall.

I guess when I think of going into business, I think of guys like that.
I'm afraid that's going to happen to me, and I want to know what to do
to avoid it.  Researching the market is a good start, but how to go about
doing *that* in an effective manner?  Simply asking a few hundred people
"Would you buy XXX?" isn't effective... what people *say* they'll buy and
what they'll *actually* buy are two different things!  By the same token,
looking at people's *current* buying habits doesn't work if you want to
find *new* opportunities (i.e. if you notice that a lot of people buy
XYZ, then getting into the XYZ business may *not* be a good idea because
the market is likely to be crowded and competition fierce).

Any other good ideas?  I get the feeling that market research is the
"missing ingredient" in all those business opportunities out there...
it's the one piece that doesn't seem to come with *any* of the computer
portrait setups, bumper-sticker kits, locksmithing courses, or 
vinyl-repair kits... and yet it seems to me that it's the most crucial
to survival!

What do you all think?

--
Jim Paradis (paradis@tallis.enet.dec.com) 
Working for DEC, speaking for myself.

Newsgroups: misc.entrepreneurs