One other thing that does not help with Market research i think is doing it in a short period.
For example, a local town near me has three or four restaurants on a shopping strip, if you walked down that strip on say a friday and saturday night for 2 or 3 weeks, you would get some market research that tells you the numbers do go up and down each week. However While on a percentage base this change may be the same week to week through the year on a weekly basis, in summer the average number of customers is much higher then winter, though the weekly averages go up and down just the same.
So to get true market research depending on the industry it needs to be over a period of time, probably the longer the better. In my above example, if someone did their research in summer for 3 or 4 weeks and then went and opened a business based on that when they hit winter they are going to be sorely disappointed when the numbers drop off. However in reverse if they did their research in winter, they would get a pleasant surprise in summer and would possibly be better prepared. However neither is a god way to do the research because you only know half the picture.
In addition one thing i have seen some other businesses suffer through is research provided by the leasing agent. Things such as "Local community population of 20,000, or 15,000 vehicles pass each day" And things like this. While this is one small piece of the research you need relying on this which so many small business people do is practically business suicide. Yes maybe their is 20,000 local residents, but how far away does this go, 1km, 3km, 5km what is classed as local, yes you may be able to find this out but it usually wont be freely given out without request. It may be 20,000 people within 5 km radius when you start to look within 5 km there could be half a dozen competing businesses.
The same thing comes up when you get figures like 15,000 cars pass per day. This tells you nothing there could be half of these vehicles, are trucks and buses, or 40% could be male drivers who have no interest in knowing that your female gym, is there. While all this is good parts of the information you need very often it is limited information that really does not give you all the information you need. And to many business owners do not realize they need to look for more information.
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