The market analysis is a study of your industry and key trends that may impact business in the future.
One of the most important discussions in our strategy meeting will be to understand your market and competitive landscape. If asked to prepare a market analysis, please consider the fundamentals of your industry, and prepare a brief PowerPoint.
The Wikipedia article on Market Analysis is fairly comprehensive.
Michael Porter, the Godfather of Strategy, has also authored a model called Five Forces.
See our Strategy Primer here.
We recommend that companies complete a “competitive SWOT.” In addition to evaluating your own strengths and weaknesses (internal) and opportunities and threats (external), it is useful to examine the SWOT of one or two competitors.
We make a distinction between external forces (those that are more general, such as social trends) and market analysis, which looks at the dynamics within a specific industry.
Regardless of which model you use, there are some basic competitive forces we want to understand:
Who are your top competitors?
How are they similar to you?
How are they different?
What customer segments are they targeting?
What unique service models, technologies, selling strategies, and marketing messaging are they employing?
What trends describe the behavior of your top customers?
Are they consolidating suppliers?
What technologies are they gravitating toward?
What features are important to them?
If you are in B2C, what consumer traits are driving their behavior? What disruption in the industry could change it forever?
Optimize has access to IBISWorld industry reports (U.S. Industry Reports catalog only), which we have purchased on behalf of our clients. We will obtain any reports you request, if you provide us the NAICS code or report name (such reports would cost approximately $700 each if you tried to purchase individually). These reports will be invaluable in framing your industry analysis.
As with all presentations at your strategy meeting, we recommend that each section dedicates 50% to presentation, and no more than one slide per three minutes of presentation time (or about 10 slides per hour).
Quick links
What will the process look like?
What is going to be expected of me?
What will be the output from this meeting?
How will we communicate with you?
What to expect in executive interviews
How to complete a STEEP analysis (if assigned to you)