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Lecture 5. 20/10/11. A Market…. a set of actual or potential customers for a given set of products or services who have a common set of needs or wants, and who reference each other when making a buying decision
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Lecture 5 20/10/11
A Market… • a set of actual or potential customers • for a given set of products or services • who have a common set of needs or wants, and • who reference each other when making a buying decision • Moore says, "the notion that part of what defines a high-tech market is the tendency of its members to reference each other when making buying decisions-- is absolutely key to successful high-tech marketing."
‘The Chasm’ Crossing the Chasm is closely related to the technology adoption lifecycle where five main segments are recognized; innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. According to Moore, the marketer should focus on one group of customers at a time, using each group as a base for marketing to the next group. The most difficult step is making the transition between visionaries (early adopters) and pragmatists (early majority).
High-Tech Marketing Model • Technology Adoption Lifecycle becomes the foundation for a high-tech marketing model • the way to develop a market is to work the curve from left to right • progressively winning each group of users • using each "captured" group as a reference for the next
The Stages • Innovators pursue technology products aggressively • Early Adopters are the rare breed of visionaries, the core dream is a business goal, not a technology goal • Early Majority are pragmatists, they tend to be 'vertically' oriented, meaning that they communicate more with others like themselves within their own industry than do technology enthusiasts and early adopters • Late Majority share the concerns of the early majority, in addition they have a tendency to be uncomfortable with technology • Laggards typically do not want anything to do with technology
Crossing the Chasm Requires a Shift in Delivered Values Obtaining Market Penetration • From Product Centric • Fastest/Smallest/ Lightest etc. • Most ‘elegant’ architecture • Unique product functionality • To Market Centric • Largest Installed base • Most 3rd party installers • De facto standard • Quality of Support
What are you? • http://www.cio.com/article/187154/What_It_s_Like_To...Be_An_Early_Adopter • Bing.com • http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10628973 • http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/10/bing-friends-facebook/
The Role of a Business/Systems Analyst Identification of core business objectives Eliciting Requirements Identifying Solutions Role of Business Analyst Communicating Requirements Analysing Requirements Documenting Requirements
BA Skillset Communication Analysis BA Skillset Leadership Business Technical Management
Leadership v Manangement • Both crucial to the success of the firm • Key difference is how they motivate people • Leaders are often achievement-focused and they try to motivate the people/followers towards the vision and mission • A manager is work focused, they work to achieve the goals and tasks assigned to them - managing people, time, money or any other resources • A thought - • Managers have subordinates • Leaders have followers
Where Good Ideas come from… http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_come_from.html
Opportunity Assessment • Part of setting up your business will involve identifying opportunities in the market on which you, or your particular idea, product, or service, can capitalise. • This can offer you the means of developing a business idea, but it can also give you the tools to better understand where an existing business idea might stand, and to look at the future potential for that idea.
Seven-domains framework • The Seven-domains framework has many advantages for both new and established ventures. • It helps identify the deal-breakers, and raises key questions to be answered. • It also provides avenues for reshaping the opportunity, identifies key strengths, and is a crucial tool in telling your story to resource providers.
The Seven Domains of Attractive Opportunities • Lays a solid foundation on which to build a business plan or create a successful entrepreneurial venture. • Model brings together three elements to offer a new and clearer way to assess and shape market opportunities and a better way for entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial teams to assess the adequacy of what they themselves bring to the table as individuals and as a group. • market, • industries and • one or more key people who makeup the entrepreneurial team
Stage 1: the micro-market test • What customer pain will your offering resolve? How strong an incentive do customers have to give you their money? Will the fish bite at a price that works? • Who, precisely, are the customers who have the pain? Do you have detailed, accurate and current information about who they are, where they live or do business, or what they do? • What benefits does your offering provide that other solutions don’t? • What evidence do you have that customers will buy what you propose to offer? • What evidence do you provide to chow that your target market has the potential to grow? • What other segments exist that could benefit from a related offering? • Can you develop capabilities that are transferable from one segment to another?
Stage 2: the macro-market test • What sort of business do you want? One with potential to become a huge business, or a small “lifestyle” operation servicing a niche market? Without answering this question first, you cannot assess for your particular opportunity the meaning of the others below. • How large is the market you are seeking to serve? In how many ways have you measured it? • How fast has it grown over the last one/three/five years? • What economic, demographic, sociocultural, technological, regulatory or natural trends can you identify that well affect your market, and what effect, favourable or otherwise, will these trends have on your business? Note: This information can be found from secondary sources – library material etc. – and from primary sources. If you are seeking venture capital and your market is not huge and/or growing rapidly then it won’t happen.
Stage 3: the macro-industry test • What industry will you compete in? Define it carefully. • Is it easy or difficult for companies to enter this industry? • Do suppliers to this industry have the power to set terms and conditions? • Do buyers have the power to set terms and conditions? • Is it easy or difficult for substitute products to steal your market? • Is competitive rivalry intense or genteel? • Based on all five forces, what is your overall assessment of this industry? Just how attractive or unattractive is it?
Stage 4: the micro-industry test • Do you possess proprietary elements that other firms cannot duplicate or imitate? • Can your business develop and employ organisational processes, capabilities or resources that others would have difficulty in duplicating or imitating? Evidence is required. • Is your business model economically viable (i.e. the company won’t run out of cash quickly)? This depends largely on the following factors; • Will your revenue be adequate in relation to capital investment required and margins you can get? • How much will it cost you to acquire and retain customers? • How long will it take you to attract customers? • Will your contribution margins be adequate to cover your fixed cost structure sometime soon? • How much cash must be tied up in working capital and for how long? • How quickly customers will pay? • How slowly suppliers and employees can be paid?
Stage 5: the Mission, aspirations and risk propensity test • What’s your entrepreneurial mission? • To serve a particular market? • To change a particular industry? • To market a particular product? • Is the passion really there? • What level of aspirations do you have for your entrepreneurial dream? • To work for yourself? • To build something small or something big? • To do? To manage? To lead? • To change the world in some way? • What sorts of risk are you and are you not willing to take? • Will you risk a secure salary and the things that go along with your current employment? For how long? • Will you risk losing control of your business? • Will you put your own money at risk? How much? • Will you risk your home or time with your family or loved ones? • Do those you love accept the risks you’ll take?
Stage 6: the “can you execute?” test • What are the few – only a handful – critical success factors in your industry? What support can you provide to show that you have identified them correctly? • Can you demonstrate – in past deeds, not mere words – that your team taken together can execute on each and every one of these CSFs? • Alternatively, have you identified which CSFs your team is not well prepared to meet, for which you need help in filling out your team?
Stage 7: the Connectedness test • Who do you and your team know up the value chain in the companies that are likely suppliers to your proposed business and to your competitors? In suppliers to companies in other industries that offer substitute products for yours? Be sure you have names, titles and contact information. • Who do you and your team know down the value chain among distributors and customers you will target, both today and tomorrow? Be sure you have names, titles and contact information. • Who do you and your team know across the value chain among your competitors and substitutes? Be sure you have names, titles and contact information.
The Seven Domains of Attractive Opportunities • Highlights three subtle but crucial distinctions and observations that most entre overlook: • Markets and industries are not the same • Both macro- and micro-level considerations are necessary: markets and industries must be examined at both levels; • The keys to assessing entre and entrepreneurial teams aren’t simply found on their resumes or in assessments of their entrepreneurial character
The Seven Domains of Attractive Opportunities • Insights Provided by the Model • Markets and industries are not the same • Both macro- and micro- level considerations are necessary: markets and industries must be examined at both levels • Addresses The Central Elements in the Assessment of Any Market Opportunity
Differences between markets and industries • A market consists of a group of current &/or potential customers having the willingness and ability to buy products to satisfy a particular class of wants or needs. • An industry consists of sellers that offer products or classes of products that are similar and close substitutes for one another. • Why is it important? • Because judgements about the attractiveness of the market one proposes to serve may be very different from judgements about the industry in which one would compete.
Is the market attractive? • Macro-level • To conduct a macro-level market assessment the following measures should be considered: • Number of customers in the market • The aggregate money spent by these customers on relevant class of goods or services • The number of units of relevant products or usage occasions • Market growth rate
Is the market attractive? • Micro-level analysis is based on four key questions • Is there a target market segment where we might enter the market in which we offer the customer clear and compelling benefits at a price they are willing to pay? • Are these benefits, in the customers’ minds, different from and superior in some way – better, faster, cheaper etc. – that what’s currently offered by other solutions? Differentiation is crucial. The vast majority of me-too products fail. • How large is this segment, and how fast it is growing? • Is it likely our entry into this segment will provide us entry to other segments we may wish to target in the future?
Investors want to know… • They don’t want to know about ideas or products. They want to know about the customer pain that your offering will resolve. They want to know who the target customer who has the pain is, and they want evidence that the target customer will buy what’s to be offered at a price that works for you. • “Any entrepreneur who cannot answer these questions simply won’t raise the money.” • Evidence of purchase intentions or purchase orders or letters of intent for your still-hypothetical product. • “customers buy benefits, not features”
Macro- and Micro- Level Considerations • May aspiring entrepreneurs make the mistake of examining only the macro-level • Through failing to identify the first customers who will buy and why they would benefit, and in ignoring how entry into this segment might create one or more options for growth into other market segments, they risk pursuing a deal-end path on two counts: • Without differentiated benefits, most customers won’t buy • Without a pathway to growth, most investors won’t invest
Define market segments • Three ways to define market segments • By who the customers are • By where the customers are • By how the customers behave • Improve odds of getting investment – seek to do business in a market that’s attractive overall. • 3 crucial questions about markets • Is my market large enough today to allow different competitors the opportunity to serve different segments without getting in each other’s way? • What are the predictions for your market’s short-term growth rate? • What are the predictions for your market’s long-term growth rate?
Macro-industry • Macro-Level • Industry attractiveness – Porter’s five forces • Threat of entry - is it easy or difficult for companies to enter the industry? • Supplier Power – Do suppliers to this industry have the power to set terms and conditions? • Buyer Power – Do buyers have the power to set terms and conditions? • Threat of substitutes – Is it easy or difficult for substitute products to steal my market? • Competitive rivalry – Is competitive rivalry intense or genteel? • The more forces that are favourable, the more attractive the industry • Once all the five forces have been assessed, the key outcome is to reach a clear conclusion about the attractiveness of one’s industry
Micro-industry • Micro-Level • A new venture is not likely to grow over the long term if the initial advantage it brings to its customers cannot be sustained in the face of subsequent competitors’ entry of if its business model lacks economic viability. • Imitation occurs quickly in most industries, both from existing competitors and from new entrants, so initial advantages can disappear in a heartbeat. Note: Thus identifying and assessing the sustainability of the proposed new firm’s competitive advantage, in the micro-level industry, is necessary.
Keys to sustaining competitive advantage • An initial competitive advantage arises when offering provides differentiated benefits to customers that are better, cheaper or faster than those offered by competitors. • Such an advantage is likely to be sustainable when: • There are proprietary elements –patents, trade secrets – that other firms are not likely to duplicate or imitate. • There are superior organisational processes, capabilities or resources that others would have difficulty in duplicating or imitating. • The business model is economically viable (i.e. the company won’t run out of cash quickly), economic viability, in turn, depending largely on the following factors • Revenue is adequate in relation to capital investment required and margins obtainable • Customer acquisition and retention costs and the time it will take to attract customers are viable • Contribution margins are adequate to cover the necessary fixed cost structure • Operating cash cycle characteristics are favourable, including factors such as • How much cash will be tied up in working capital and for how long • How quickly customers will pay • How slowly suppliers and employees can be paid.
Competitive Advantage • Companies with strong proprietary protection enjoy a comparatively favourable competitive environment and relative freedom to set prices at levels that generate substantial profits, profits that may be reinvested in developing future winners, or simply taken to the bank. • Entrepreneurs who can build superior organisational processes and capabilities into their companies can maintain sustainable competitive advantage over their current and future competition without patent protection. E.g. Nokia Note: Do not assume that a patent means protection.
Will the Fish Bite? “the customer…is the ultimate reason for whatever the organisation produces” Peter Drucker • Bottom left corner of model. • Micro-level: Target segment benefits and attractiveness • Do customers Matter? • It’s not about you. It’s not about your revolutionary products or services.
Micro-level analysis • 4 crucial questions for micro-level analysis • Is there a target market segment where we might enter the market in which we offer the customer clear and compelling benefits at a price they are willing to pay? • Are these benefits, in the customers’ minds, different from and superior in some way – better, faster, cheaper etc. – than what’s currently offered by other solutions? Differentiation is crucial. The vast majority of me-too products fail. • How large is this segment, and how fast it is growing? • Is it likely our entry into this segment will provide us entry to other segments we may wish to target in the future?
Your connections matter: which matters most? • Connections with suppliers (up the value chain), with competitors (across the value chain) and with distributors, customers, consumers or end-users (all down the value chain) can provide crucial leading edge information that could spell the difference between success and failure at an important juncture in the life of your business. • Connections can deliver to an entrepreneurial firm three important outcomes: • Identifying fortuitous trends or changes in the marketplace that the company might take advantage of; • Doing so early, before other would-be competitors can do so • Obtaining a broad-based assessment of such a development, from a variety of perspectives outside the firm, in order that a decision to pursue it can be an evidence-based one rather than a risky guess.
Connectedness • What kind of connections will your venture want to have? • Connections up the value chain to suppliers who deal with the leaders in your industry and with firms in other industries that might serve as substitutes for the products you provide. • Connections down the value chain to potential customers in target markets that you might serve one day in addition to the markets you plan to target at the outset. • Connections across your industry with competitors – and with firms from other industries that offer substitutes – so that you can gain some perspective to gauge accurately changes in market conditions