The University of Dayton Business Plan Competition Coaching Session Two: Opportunity Analysis Many thanks to Joan Giglierano, Reference Librarian and Assistant Professor at Roesch Library

Giving credit where credit is due Joan Giglierano reviewed the material, and provided advice on what to present She also provided several slides

Last week The Intro The Problem Statement The Opportunity

This week The Opportunity Looking for industry information – Good for a competitor analysis grid Looking for market information – Size and demographics

What business are you in? NAICS codes: Categorization of industries Level of analysis—more digits = finer grained Replaces SIC (Standard Industry Classification)

A sample NAICS code NAICS -- North American Industry Classification SystemNAICS -- North American Industry Classification System 1.11Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting 2.111Crop Production Oilseed and Grain Farming Soybean Farming Soybean Farming Oilseed (except Soybean) Farming

A sample of some codes Greenhouse, Nursery, and Floriculture Production" Flats, wood, greenhouse, manufacturing" Manufacturing"Greenhouses, prefabricated metal, manufacturing" ‘Signals’ (e.g. highway, pedestrian” Cryogenic tanks

Need customer information? Start with Population data and Demographics – Income, education, age, origin, to the neighborhood level Economic Indicators – Housing starts, Services, Inventories – Trend analysis

Better yet: Social Explorer A graphical view of census data Geographically based—good for visualizing, down to tract level

A sample of Geo data

For Economic census data, use census.gov Business and Economic data – Economic data is by industry by state, broken out at the county level – Example: There are 1008 veterinary practices in Ohio, generating $679 Million in Revenue, employing 9,799 people who earn $219 million – In Preble County Ohio, there are five vets, generating $2 Million Revenue, employing 37 people who earn $617k – Naics code 54194

Want to estimate salaries in an industry? Drill down to the county level you like Divide payroll by # employees Divide payroll by revenues for a sense of operating margins Example from previous page: Ohio average emp earns $23k annually

Census data can give a sense of how the market/industry is growing Elderly and Hispanics are the two rapidly growing demographics You have to cross tab the info yourself, but you can look at – density information, – Income per capita (Census does that for you) – Age, education, and income

Reference USA Basic information on small, private companies (and others) Offers radius search for discovering competitors within immediate geographical area Custom search capabilities

Standard & Poor’s NetAdvantage Industry Surveys Global Industry Surveys Stock, bond, and mutual fund reports Security Dealers of North America Register of Corporations, Directors and Executives

If you are marketing to Businesses Where to turn? UD Roesch library! Market Share Reporter: Lists the major firms in each NAICS code HQ USA (HQ addresses and contact info) Ohio Business Directory (addresses by city, # employees, and manager’s name) Manufacturing and Distribution: Addresses by city and industry, and market leader info Ohio Valley Industrial Buying Guide Professional Licensing and Occupational Directory – Lists # of licensees by state for each licensed career)

More Roesch resources at the library (these are paper copies) Business ranking: A list of almost every imaginable category Business Ranking: Lists each states largest businesses, ranked by sales Directory of firms operating in Foreign Countries Blue Book Building and construction almanac Harris Services Directory (great for industry analysis)

On-line resources at Roesch Hoovers (corporate listing and snapshot) Mintel Oxygen: Industry analysis, consumer attitudes, customer buying motivation. 40 pages of industry analysis Thompson one Banker: Financial analysis of 30,000 companies Reference USA Lexus-Nexis (on-line news stories)

Content analysis and Identifying trends Factiva and lexis nexis allow you to search for news coverage of a topic by date You can build a trend-line to see what topics are hot and what are not Business Ethics peaked about 2003, dipped, and surged briefly in 2006

Some Quick and Dirty ways to conduct research yourself How long are lines? Time them! How many out of county/state license plates? How long do customers linger in a store/given area? What impediments to shopping are there? How far do people walk to reach your store? Can you buy a small mailing list? Can you try a sample mailing for effectiveness? Zoomarang and SurveyMonkey are free on-line survey forms. – If you have a target audience, they are good to use. Visit competitors, gently “mark” a product, and watch it

Watch how people buy Paco Underhill’s “Why we buy” is a great book of ideas of how to improve sales. Compare your idea to that of your competitors—what do they do that seems to increase sales Compare competitors to Paco Underhill, see how they limit themselves. Baskets in Stores