Measuring Market Opportunities at Woolworths Supermarket: Forecasting and Marketing Knowledge
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Introduction
Business organizations are always striving gain advantage against competitors in own areas of operation. Woolworth’s supermarket, which is Australia’s largest supplier of fresh food, is no exception. In examining the opportunities available in its market, its management would be able to come up with best strategic ways of tapping a higher percentage of the customers in its location (Lambert and Davidson, 2013).
According to Lafley and Martin, (2013) analyzing a specific market potential, one has to focus on the specific area of operation and gather accurate data to enable effective understanding of the trends. All markets have prospects, it is upon a will specific business interests to carefully explore these hidden prospects and carefully nurture them for betterment of these enterprises.
It is not always easy to succeed in any business undertaking. Those with persistence are bound to bear these fruits. The key areas of focus a successful market strategy include being able to predict accurately the opportunities available in the market through a well-planned examination of the how different aspects of that market respond to various changes.
Ways of conducting Market analysis
Lindgreen, (2010) explains that creating effective market point of reference is by examining the factors that influence how customers obtain goods and their current and future preferences. Successful business entities have high –class regard for the clients. They have values that ensure priority is given to the client in all undertaking, while excluding the interests of the stakeholders. Business managers in these entities have an enhanced understanding on ways of satisfying the clients. This in turn attracts positive feedback that sells the name of the entity.
According to Chuang Thomas (2010), a carefully planned market point of reference has a direct impact on its productivity. This is witnessed by increased profits and employees satisfaction. In analyzing market opportunities, there are certain attributes that help in identifying the focus points. There should an analysis of the product features, including its quality as compared to other similar ones already existing in the market. These features should be in line with the business policy operations and the available resources (Ferrell, 2014).
Different forms of approaches of analyzing a target market are used. For instance, it can adopt the method of sub dividing the target market into groups of people and products that exist in that niche. There has to be a clear strategy for divisions to capture all the elements that would be used to shape the methods that will be used for this analysis. Once this has been achieved, it would be very easy to specify the real target market (Ferrell, 2014).
Boone (2012) pointed out another important aspect of measuring market opportunities in terms of projecting the income of a business entity over a specific period. The income is generated from sales of the product the enterprise operates in. forecasting helps in assessing products and making better informed choices. By doing this, the department involved in the production of the product will have details of how much of the production is required and for which period.
In addition, forecasting helps the management plan on the amount of money and resources it would utilize for that period. This is always important to ensure a schedule is created for all the production units. This makes planning for the future of the entity. Some computer programs generate forecasts for the incomes and revenue of a business. They automatically generate graphical solution from data that has been input. This make easier for management to plan financial solutions Boone (2012).
There are two main types of sales projection. The first method is use of quantitative projection. This method focuses more on data that shows how much of the expected sales in a period. Quantity is an important aspect of business productivity, the more volumes made of sales, and the more of the profits generated. This will have a direct impact on the employee’s motivation. This will increases chances of business expansion.
The other method used for sales projection is the qualitative projection. This method focuses more on customer satisfaction. It analyses feedback from the customer and strives to ensure the customer needs catered for. This analysis tends to ignore the interests of stakeholders to serve customers with the best standards that are superior in the position Boone (2012).
As Rosillo (2013) views, measuring of business opportunities are outlined by use observation. This is based on data that can be analyzed from the merchandise cycle. Based on these forms of analysis, a product viewed to be in its introductory stage. In this stage, it has not yet attracted enough clients (Gertner, 2011). There would be need for aggressive marketing. There can a case where a product is observed to be falling. This also requires an effort to reverse the trend in terms of marketing. Others include increasing and developed product. Effort is also required to retain the trend and keep the customers.
Market opportunities are also analyzed using surveys. Sales persons being closer to the clients approximate the expected sales for a certain period. Boundaries are used for the surveys where certain specific groups or regions are targeted for surveys. There is expert hiring in some cases to conduct the surveys in areas and groups that have complex settings.
In other cases, market opportunity analysis based on past researched data, decisions are made from past trends that tend to be repeated. There are also cases of market testing where different sets of groups are evaluated. In the food industry, market testing is evaluated by giving out free samples of food products to a specific group or environment (Hair et al, 2012). In the process of measuring market opportunities, the stakeholders would want to evaluate the reputation of that specific market. This would in the form of levels of trading. In this regard, they will need to know whether the levels of trading are low, medium, high or stagnant. The price variations of the market will also be analyzed to discover how to set pricing for different products.
The public should be made aware of the forms of transactions that take place in a certain market place so that they can be well prepared for the type of products to expect in the market. Certain indicators are used to inform the clients about these products. the use of TV adverts,
VanOsch and Coursaris (2013) indicate that the rate distribution of innovative activities in a certain market point determines how the available market opportunities are available for the business entities. Market would grow linearly if the innovations were carefully guarded.
Market opportunities are also available on the internet. The social networking platforms are better placed to give a platform where marketers can use it to find a huge range of marketing opportunities for their enterprises. By engaging in forums such as chat rooms, tweets, instant messaging enables interaction on products and services available for sale or display.
Market opportunities are related to eating habits of people from different social backgrounds. There are certain preferences in food products by people for same heritage. For instance, there are cases where ethnic minorities in United Kingdom experience problems in adjusting to health eating habits. With their traditional foods rarely available, they find it difficult to keep up with the available food types (Chesbrough, 2010).
Conclusion
Conducting market surveys in different social settings would establish new market opportunities for business that engage in supply of foodstuff like Woolworths. They would penetrate markets in United Kingdom and other ethnically accommodating economies like the United States. Opportunities are everywhere for market of all kinds of products for businesses. It is upon those in charge of those entities to look for enough talent that would help them device competitive methods of tapping these increasing opportunities.