How to conduct market research in startups and small firms?

We start with a short introduction to the 3 groups of methods we will cover in this section: consulting, on-line and off-line

In this lecture, you will learn our favorite method for the first rough estimation – the bottom-up approach. We also give you 2 examples of Excel calculation and how to use it.

The Top-down is the little brother of the bottom-up approach – not used that often but still very useful for resegmenting the market (niche and low-cost strategy).

Now let's see how you can use in practice the bottom-up approach to estimate the size of the market. We will have a look at an interesting case study.

In this lecture, I will do another case study, using the framework introduced in the previous lectures.

In this lecture, I will present you with the case study. You will be asked to estimate the market for ceramic tiles.

In this lecture I will show you the logical structure to the case presented in the previous lecture

Once you are done with the logical structure you should build the analysis in Excel on the basis of it

The data you have gathered will be used in your business analysis. You can also fill in the slides prepared in the very beginning and modify it if needed

Reality still bites. Here you will be given short overview of the off-line research methods with suggestion what to be used when

In this lecture we show you how to conduct the off-line interviews, how to draw conclusions out of it and where to find respondents

In this lecture we show you how to map and read the daily life of your customer and how it can help your marketing efforts

Store Check come in handy whenever you are talking about B2C physical products, services and retail. This methods gives you solid facts on which you can build your business

Service level is time and again your opportunity to disrupt markets. Therefore, check on your own customer experience with mystery shopping

On-line research is cheap and insightful. We will go through all nice methods how to get to know the market, customer and competitors

Facebook Audience Insight is the perfect tool to check different segments without the necessity to do any interviews. For first estimation it is the perfect tool

Facebook allows you to have a look at social profiles of your potential customers. If you want to understand them better have a look at this as well

You want to know what do your competitors do? Where they get the traffic from? Check this lecture on SimilarWeb.

Google is so nice to tell you through search results where is the market. Use the Keyword Planner to see whether you are able to make money on your ideas and how much you have to spend to get the trafffic

Google is nice but Youtube and Slideshare are the places to go if you look for more advanced info faster. Check this lecture to know what to use and when.

Mobile is the new black ;). Even if you are not into mobile applications check the markets for applications to see what are the worries of people and what they like

One of the sources is the World Bank database. Here I will show you what you can find there

One of the sources is the World Bank database. Here I will show you how to use it

Euromonitor has a lot of detailed data on European markets that shows you in a lot of detail the structure of many markets.

One of the source of the general data is trading Economics

If you want to research a market using online searches one of the most interesting sources is Ubersuggest. Here I will show you how to use it and what kind of data it has.

In many cases, you will have to do not only store checks in physical stores but also in online stores. We will discuss this subject in this lecture. Before going deeper into this lecture I would recommend revising the lecture on offline store checks. In the online store checks you can compare different types of stores:

1. Compare different offline stores

2. Compare different online stores

3. Compare offline to online for the same brand

4. Compare offline to online for different brands

We will discuss this in this lecture in more detail. Later on, we will have a case study devoted to online store-checks

During the online store check you most likely will be gathering the following information:

• Name, photos of the product & assigned categories

• Prices of specific products

• Available quantity

• # of reviews

• Rules for organizing data on the webpage

• Rules for presenting data

• Additional information on the availability in offline stores

• Discounts on the product

We will discuss this subject in more detail in this lecture

Let’s see how you can use online store checks to analyze the market. This time around we will do a store check for cosmetics

In this lecture, we will solve the previously introduced case study.

In this lecture, we solve the case study on online store checks.

In this lecture, we will solve the previously introduced case study.

In this lecture, we will solve the previously introduced case study.

Crunchbase is a great source of information on the startup world. They gather information on all investments in the startup world. On Crunchbase you can do research by following criteria:

• Company Name

• Industry

• Location

• Funding

• # of employees

We will discuss this in this lecture

Now let's apply Crunchbase to research the drone industry and a company called DocPlanner that acts as a marketplace for booking visits with doctors.

Let's see how you can use the ChatGPT for market research

The information from customers is extremely important. Nowadays we have plenty of sites that gather customers reviews. We will discuss how you can use them in market research. Below is a short summary of what you can learn from sites with a review.

In this lecture, we will discuss where you can find customer reviews for:

• Consumer Goods

• SaaS Products

• Restaurants / Hotels

• Local Services

Let's see how we can use Capterra for researching customer reviews.

Imagine that you were hired by a firm to analyze the emailing software market and to tell them whether there is a niche for them to create a new product. Use the customer reviews.

Let's see at the data that we have for the case study that we will be solving

In this lecture, we will be solving the case study introduced in the previous lectures.

In this lecture we will be solving the case study introduced in the previous lectures

One of the ways to understand the market and competitors is to try and compare products, especially from different firms. You can do that using comparison tools/sites

Let's see how we can compare products using GetApp website adn what kind of conclusions we can draw out of this

In this lecture, I will discuss what kind of information and where you can find from official resources.

Publicly quoted firms want to communicate with investors. Therefore, they provide a lot of data. I will show you an example of what kind of data you can find from official sources of information from Disney

Publicly quoted firms want to communicate with investors. Therefore, they provide a lot of data. I will show you an example of what kind of data you can find from official sources of information from LPP – a big fashion group in Easter Europe (similar to Inditex – the owner of Zara)

In this lecture I will show you where you can find some useful financial data

In this lecture, I will show you how you can find what is the strategy of the competitors of the Target Company you are analyzing. This is an extremely important part of the competitors' analysis

Here I will show you professional methods of consumer research that you may consider for bigger projects, businesses

Let's see how you can combine all the techniques to analyze the home & garden market and present results

In this section I will talk about how trends influence your research

Google Trends is an excellent tool to check whether certain keyword is on a rise or not. Thanks to this tool you can check what are the trends by countries and media.

Google Public Data enables you to browse publicly available data from 1 place. You get access espiecially to macrodata. Here we show how to use the Google Public Data to check what are the trends on your main drivers

Trend Economy similar to Google Public Data gives you access to publicly available, mainly maco data.

Statista is a great source of information on many markets. They gather data from other sources and analyze them

Important part of the trends analysis is talking to experts. I will discuss in lecture how to do it.

It’s not easy to find experts. In this lecture I will show you some sources that you can use

You have to find the right location, spot for your concept. It is not easy yet it has huge impact on your success. Without the proper location even the best concept will have at best mediocre results. The perfect location is the one that brings you a lot of potential customers from your target group. There are plenty of nice techniques that you can apply to make sure that the location is good. I will show you in this section step by step how you can pick the right selection and check what kind of profits it can bring you 

Storechecks are very useful also for checking specific locations. You can check whether specific district is good for specific type of cuisine or type of restaurant. I will show you here on some examples how it can be done

Google Maps is another great tool for checking whether specific location is good. I will show you here on the basis of an example how you should define the so called catchment area and how to measure the level of competition using Google Maps

On-demand marketplaces are aggregating offers from different restaurants from different areas therefore you can use their search module to measure the level  of competition and to see what tactics other apply to sell on-line food.

Keyword Planner can be also used with great success to check whether certain restaurant concept makes sense in a specific district. It provides you estimation of number of searches (people interested) and also estimation of your marketing budget

Review sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor are powerful tools that can be used to check specific location espiecially when it comes to number of specific restaurants as well as their strength measured via reviews (number of reviews and their average score)

Concept is the type of restaurant you are running with all the implications in terms of the business mode. The concept includes: service level, type of cuisine you are serving, pricing, look &feels, purchasing reasons and habits of customers, capacity and size. We discuss in general why it is  important to choose the right concept what I actually means

Using the store-check you can learn a lot about specific business: who is coming to the restaurant, what they are ordering, how long they are staying, etc. You can also estimate whether the restaurant is profitable or not. I will show you step by step how to perform store check and how to interpret the data you have gathered from it

Here I will show you how to use the franchising concept database to research the concept you are interested in

Here I will show you how to use recommendation marketplace like Yelp to research the customer

Social media are valuable source of intel on your competitors and existing restaurants. By analyzing them you will know how they communicate with their target group, what is the focus of the both the restaurant owner / manager and customers. I will show you how to draw conclusions from the data on the fanpage of one pizza restaurant

Here I will show you how to use the Keyword Planner to research specific concept and make sure that it makes sense in your city. This method also helps you estimate what they are looking for (type of food, requirements) and also gives you some hints on how much you have to spend to get the traffic from on-line 

Google Trends is an excellent tool to check whether certain keyword is on a rise or not. Thanks to this tool you can check what are the trends by countries and media.

Quite often there are interesting reports already available on the market. I will show you here some examples

Your restaurants will be visited by different segments of customers yet you should have 1 favorite that you will concentrate on – the target group. I will show you how to define it and analyze their behavior to make sure that you build attractive from their point of view restaurant concept in the right place

Here we present an exmaple from USA of segmentation with real data

Your restaurants will be visited by different segments of customers yet you should have 1 favorite that you will concentrate on – the target group. I will show you how to define it and analyze their behavior to make sure that you build attractive from their point of view restaurant concept in the right place

In this lecture we show you how to conduct the off-line interviews, how to draw conclusions out of it and where to find respondents

In this lecture we show you how to conduct the off-line interviews, how to draw conclusions out of it and where to find respondents. Here we will talk about new, unkown restaurant concepts where it is much more difficult to find out what the customer really wants

Facebook Audience Insight is the perfect tool to check different segments without the necessity to do any interviews. For first estimation it is the perfect tool

On review marketplaces like Yelp, TripAdvisor you have plenty of reach reviews that can be used to draw conclusions on what the customer group likes and dislikes in current concepts. This will help you to learn from other’s mistakes and improve your concept. You can analyze what is important to the customer, what do they pay attention to and how to communicate with them.