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Market & Competitive Analysis

Understanding your potential customers and competition are important to making business decisions like pricing, expenses and promotions. These activities are designed to support students’ knowledge in market research and determining their competitive advantages.

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Competitive Advantage

These activities connect the process researching competition to determine advantage that entrepreneurs complete to something the students are familiar with – music artists and restaurants. By comparing these businesses on their key identifiers students can practice analyzing competitors and determining a competitive advantage.

Entrepreneurial Case Study Marbles: The Brain Store

This case study details the experience of real-life entrepreneur, Lindsay Gaskins; Founder, CEO and President of Marbles: The Brain Store. Following her story from the idea generation phase through the unsuccessful (and then successful) launch of her business, this study shows students the importance of ongoing market research – as an idea generation tool, a method of gathering information about your potential customers, and a way to constantly revise and retool your business according to customer demand.

Chocolate Bar Market Research Activity

By completing this activity, students will receive practice in doing their own Primary Research effectively. Therefore, this is a great exercise to complete before attempting to do the Market Analysis on their business plans. As part of their participation in the Wholesale Buying/Selling Experience, students are required to do Market Research before doing the Buying Activity.

Eva's Edibles

Before students have to do their own research, this case study allows students to walk through the market research process, learn how to identify the different types of data needed, and begin to locate resources that can help them do their own research. Ideally, this activity will help students produce stronger Market Analysis slides as they have a template to follow.