How to perform market search before buying/sourcing a product?

  • Added:
    Jun 12, 2013
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How to perform market search before buying/sourcing a product? Photo by Chris Martin

If you are determined to spend your hard earned money to launch a new business, the best way to optimize your success is to carry out thorough market research before you begin doing any purchases.

Market research will provide you with a better understanding of your competition and your target audience, and allow you to gain a keener insight into the business environment. It would help you decide upon the business practices and methodologies that will best serve your intended customer base. Ongoing market research not only helps you source the right product, but also enables you to form educated and profitable business decisions.

Whether you decide to sell products online or offline, effective market research is a significant task since most of your success would depend on appropriate product sourcing. Product sourcing can make or break your business profits. The process may seem exhaustive and time consuming but it is worth the effort.

Before sourcing a product, you must find out the demand for that particular product. If you source a product that demonstrates significant demand in the market, you will be more likely to incur good sales and eventually substantial profits too. On the other hand, buying products that are not in much demand would mean lower sales. Your goods may even end up in the warehouse, wasting your space and your business capital.

Your market research must also include determining the appropriate profit margin for the particular product that you are planning to source. As a business owner, you must aim to maximize your profit margin by sourcing goods at the lowest possible rates while still offering them to your customers at a discount off the retail value.

Do not forget to look at the competition in the market. Are there many sellers offering similar products in your same sales channel? What price are those sellers offering? How much of the market share are your competitors enjoying? These details can further aid you in making the right purchasing decisions.

In order to carry effective market research for sourcing the right product, you should consider making use of market research tools. With the help of market research tools you can find out how quick your products would sell in the market. You can find out which wholesale products are profitable and which are not, and you can avoid the pitfalls that most businesses face by sourcing the wrong product. Market research tools would enable you to start a profitable business and expand your business quite easily.

There are paid as well as non-paid market research tools that will help you know what your customers are buying. Depending on your aibility, you may use either to get reliable data before sourcing any product.

Search for Hot Items on eBay or Amazon.com, two of the leading online marketplaces. Regardless of the category of products that you are interested in selling, you will be able to gauge the supply, demand and availability of these products on the current market to determine if it’s worthwhile to jump on board or choose another product line. There is another very useful section on the eBay called as eBay Pulse. It lists out the words that have been searched for the maximum number of times and can also be great for conducting your searches.

Last but not the least; complement your market research with social media marketing. Create a fan page on Facebook, Pinterest or any other social networking site to find out what your target customers like and what their preferences are. You may also get their opinions on how you can serve them better.

Hope these tips help you in sourcing the right product for your business. All the best for your future endeavours.

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Whether you decide to sell products online or offline, effective market research is a significant task since most of your success would depend on appropriate product sourcing. Product sourcing can make or break your business profits. The process may seem exhaustive and time consuming but it is worth the effort.


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