Mercy bakes cakes for her friends and shares it to them every weekend, her friends loved it and because of the cake they gathered at Mercy’s house every Saturday to have a taste of the free cake, Mercy thought this was a good business idea and she quit her job to begin the cake business but unfortunately even her friends whom she had been giving free cake did not support her business by buying the cake. She had lost her job and had used up all her savings which had brought her back to a point zero.
There are people who decide to quit their jobs and follow their passion, they just have this million dollar business plan that they trust so much and they expect to be the ground breaker for their lives but unfortunately after quitting their well-paying jobs, they realize that there is more to this business thing than they realize and sadly by that time, there is no job to go back to and this will result into lots of unwarranted sad circumstance.
Market Survey is the Solution.
Things like this can actually be prevented if we can actually study the market properly before making any investment, this can be done by a proper market research. A market research is to properly understand what the market space looks like before you venture into it. Practically studying the market in order to understand what to expect from it.
Market survey is like marriage itself, you don’t just get married to someone without knowing them a little bit, of course you might not completely understand the person but you should certainly have an idea on what you may expect to deal with in the institution and it is the same thing with business, before you go into business you need to understand what to expect and that is where market survey comes in.
Using Ruth’s case as an example, she needs to do a study on the cake sellers available in the neighbourhood, ask questions about the price of the cakes sold and also know the ingredients put into those cakes, this way she will be able to understand what the people want and what price they are willing to pay for a cake.
Primary Market Research.
This is important for both new business owners and those who may want to expand their business, a face to face communication and simple survey questions could provide the required answer for the business model.
You may think that people will love your idea but you cannot be so sure of what their response may be until you ask them.
Personal Business Mistake.
I made that personal mistake that has cost me some money and I wish it could be reversed but I guess I had to learn the hard way. I had purchased some high quality jewelleries hoping that my customers will be able to afford it but unfortunately most of them preferred the low quality ones even if it got damaged easily rather than a high quality ones that will last for a long time. I still have them and I hope I will be able to sell them soon but I would have saved myself some money if I had just carried out a market survey before I purchased those jewelleries.
