Research on the hoof

The Bath and West Show June 2010

I have a love of coffee and could remember that previously there have been lots of stalls selling ground coffee. Whilst you can find every "difficult" product under the sun - ie those that do not sell on the high street, there was no ground coffee to be seen. I was there for 4 days and looked pretty hard.

4 years ago there was lots of coffee ground by individuals hoping to catch the eye of supermarkets.

During this time the market has matured and the supply chain settled down. Ground coffee or even coffee shops are no longer "growth" markets in the same way as they were and to some extend consumers have made their choices on brand.

Breaking this down - it is useful to research things over time - you get a picture of how things are changing. This is an example of longitudinal research.

I was working with a wood pellet supplier - Energy2burn - and with a bit of questioning it was a good opportunity to look at the competitive landscape. It was possible to work out margins, concentration ratios, marketing strategies, and predict behaviour. It helped match what I already knew about some companies to reality. This is called cross referencing.