Free advice, tips and trends on market and competitive research insights and analysis. Learn how competitor and market research can benefit your business. Discover how to track competitors, understand a new market, and identify customer preferences.
For those of us who are statistically-challenged, here's a brilliant sample size calculator. This tool helps you to determine how to obtain a statistically significant result in a survey. Helpfully, the calculator also tells you how many people are needed to reach to get a certain level of accuracy, plus it calculates the margin of error based on the existing sample size.
Want more insights on exports and imports across the globe, but don’t want to read endless tables filled with teeny-tiny print? The Atlas of Economic Complexity is for you. The Atlas is a data visualisation tool developed by Harvard University’s Growth Lab. With data from 250 countries and territories, on 20 categories of goods, five types of service and over 6,000 products, you can dive deep into global trade data. A significant benefit of the Atlas is that the information is immediate and visual, although a little dated (2017) due to the data needing to be ‘harmonised’. Perfect for topline data though and it looks pretty! However, if you need help, please get in touch.
Locating import and export data is fundamental to understanding the size of a market and who the competitors are. This data is probably being used to scrutinise the effect of the current tariff war between the USA and China. Both want to be the number one industrial powerhouse, and wield power with the prestige and economic might that this brings.
Most countries structure their trade data using HS (Harmonised Tariff System) codes. These codes can be up to 10 digits, with the increase in numbers providing more specific product description. The best source for international trade flows is the United Nation’s Comtrade platform, which has 99% of global merchandise trade. The downside is that the data is for whole years only, so won’t reflect any recent change in business which can happen due to a change in tariffs for example. It also only has information to a six-digit level. Regional trade data information can be found by using the Eurostat International Trade Database or USITC which has American trade information. New Zealand trade data can be accessed from Stats NZ.
Just beware that one HS code can cover a myriad of different products, so the numbers can be a little opaque and give a wrong impression of a market. That’s when some ‘sense-making’ needs to happen, and this can be down by corroborating trade numbers with other data or conducting primary research.
Check out Figure.NZ, a website devoted to data democracy. The aim is to make public, private and academic data about New Zealand free for all to use so that evidence-based decisions can improve lives. The website uses graphs to make the data come alive and illustrate trends that anyone can quickly understand. Sadly, the chart below demonstrates that things aren't so rosy at the moment in terms of the establishment of new businesses.
Our latest newsletter (Insights 13) gives some handy tips on pulling country demographic statistics on just about every country in the world. We also feature a great new DIY tool on how to find valuable patent information. A patent search can highlight who is investing in R&D to be more efficient, and where they are focusing their efforts. Finding this sort of valuable competitive intelligence is usually a job for the expert searcher, but with the tips in this slide deck, you can learn more about the information contained in a patent. As mentioned earlier, patent searching can be fraught with danger, so get in touch with me if you need assistance. I can refer you to an experienced patent researcher.
Information such as market share or the number of widgets sold can be critical to know when entering a new market.
Although getting hold of good numbers can help you decide what strategy to take, it’s only part of the story. The key is to get numbers that you can rely on plus understand the context around them. A sales increase or decrease can be the result of a competitor moving into the market and launching their products, a factory burning down, which stops a product being made, or tough economic times. You can’t understand a market by numbers alone.
So now that I’ve made that point, statistics are often the first numbers you need for DIY market research. The University of Auckland hosts the OFFStats website. It’s easy to search for the statistical information you need, with links to great stats websites from all over the world. Here you can find out how many motor vehicles there are in Italy to which country makes the best use of information and communication technologies.
Market research reports contain great data and context on the size of a market, however they can often be very expensive. If you have spent thousands of dollars developing your product, it can be well worth the investment to get some reassurance and extra information that these reports can give.
There are ways of getting market data for free or little cost. Market research reports are often released with a free abstract that often has some great background data. A simple Google search can locate these.
Slideshare is a collection of presentations that have often been prepared by industry experts. These are free to download and contain data trends on markets. A similar website is Scribd.
We also have NZ Trade and Industry’s market research. It has loads of free research on a variety of export markets. Try them out now!
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