"Eight Steps" In Shoe Market Research

When you go shopping, you can often see some shops showing "notices, such as colleagues who are not allowed to enter, reprimand".

This is rarely done, but when we are doing market research, we can feel the alert mentality of the terminal staff.

Due to the fact that opponents are not careful in their research and research, compulsory courses are often "routine" and perfunctory.

Then, how can we make the investigation produce profits quickly?

Three levels of research

Generally speaking, there are three levels of competition research.

The first level is to see the most superficial things of competitors, that is, what promotions the competitors are doing today and what products are cheaper.

In the eyes of some shopkeeper, we can't wait for all of our products to be lower than our competitors. If so, the store manager will lose the value of existence.

The second level starts to pay attention to the internal things of competitors, such as what is the rule of promotion, the positioning of products and the characteristics of product mix, and what special services are there.

Though it is a little deeper than those that are purely priced and promotional, it still touches the epidermis and does not go deep into it.

The third level focuses on the internal and long-term advantages of competitors.

These are the most important things that can really kill us or we can hardly surpass them.

A good manager will think about how to learn and how to go beyond that.

Eight steps of research

In 2011,

The group has conducted in-depth research on the men's shoes Market in Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Anhui provinces in order to promote the development of BELLE men's shoes in the above market.

The survey is very detailed and provides a good example for us to investigate competitors.

To sum up, there are mainly the following aspects:

1, look at strengths and weaknesses.

First, we will take a comprehensive look at the comprehensive advantages and disadvantages of our competitors in the business circle, store size, location, store layout, product structure and positioning, price strategy, and reputation in the consumer.

2, look at product positioning

Then look closely at how the competitors' products are positioned, what target customers they are aiming at, and which ones are repetitive and conflicting with their own customers. What are the mismatches of competitors' products? How are the product structure of competitors designed when they are laying out their target customers? What are their characteristics and their pros and cons?

3, find sales growth points in competition.

According to our comparison with competitors and the degree of control of consumer demand, it is easy to find that some competitors do not pay attention to the demand space that consumers need and the market capacity is larger. This is our blue ocean; the white spots that have not been met by consumer demand and our comparative advantage are the growth points of our sales.

Of course, for those of us who are at a disadvantage, but we can gradually narrow the gap through efforts, they will become the growth point of our sales, but relatively speaking, this is more difficult and the input-output effect will be smaller.

4, look at the price strategy and promotional activities.

Through the poster of the competitors, the arrangement of the promotion activities inside the store and the law of product pricing, we can easily tell what the price strategy of the competitor is and what the organizational rules of its promotional activities are.

5. Look at the quality of service.

The quality of service of competitors is dominant and implicit.

The dominant ones include whether the service polite language is in place, what service items have been added, whether the staff service is enthusiastic or not, etc. the hidden ones include how the customer's shopping experience is, how they communicate with customers, and how they try to satisfy the needs of customers.

6, look at corporate culture

This is a deeper level.

To see the enterprise culture is not to see what the competitors have put up here or there, what the employees say, the key depends on the morale of the staff, how the employees are working, the potential of the employees' potential, the degree of employee identification and so on.

Through these observations, we can see whether competitors' threats to themselves are temporary or lasting.

7, look at the customer's evaluation of competitors.

This is also a deeper content and a key point.

If customers are very interested and agree with their competitors, even if we feel that our competitors are nothing, it is no use; if something we do not agree with and the customers agree very much, it means that our vision is likely to be a problem.

We can't see enough bright spots on our competitors. Our eyes are all aimed at the weak side of our competitors, while the customers see their competitors being good to them.

We must overcome these blind spots.

8. Look at the evaluation of competitors by manufacturers and agents.

This is something we often neglect.

If manufacturers and agents agree with their competitors, they will rush to deliver shells for them, give more promotional support and new products, and we will get relatively little support. This shows that there are some problems in dealing with the relationship between manufacturers.

At this point, we need calm analysis and timely adjustment in order to obtain strong support from manufacturers and agents.

Specifically, the key points of competitor research are: Factory promotion, customer flow, personnel structure, staff income, business hours, strengths and weaknesses, time sales, prices, passenger flow, customer price, hardware facilities, product positioning and structure, theme marketing activity design and organization, service quality, atmosphere, sales volume, shopping line, product display, scale, external environment, characteristics, etc.

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Link: "research" brings WAL-MART back to the top.

Founder

When WAL-MART founder Sam Walton founded the first store, the rent accounted for 5% of the sales, far higher than that of his peers, and the annual sales volume was only $72 thousand, while the annual sales of Kay Matt's stores could reach US $150 thousand.

But in 90s,

The fastest way to catch up with Kay Matt more than 10 times the size of his own is that Sam Walton has seen almost every store in the United States.

Even Kemat's chairman failed to do so.

Whether in the early stage of development or in a relatively large scale, Sam always put the detailed research on competitors first.

Learn from competitors and quickly shorten the gap with competitors.

Sam will learn from any of the best practices that happen to his competitors and promote them in all WAL-MART stores.