Market analysis

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Market analysis plays a major part in a firm's planning activities. It guides decisions on: inventory, purchase, work force expansion/contraction, facility expansion, purchases of capital equipment, promotional activities, and many other aspects of a company. Forecasts in these areas must be accurate and decision makers must understand how they were derived.

Not all managers are asked to conduct a market analysis, but all managers must make decisions using market analysis data and understand how the data was derived. So all managers need a reasonable understanding of the tools most used for making sales forecasts and analyzing markets.

To understand a market analysis, managers need a basic understanding of statistics and some knowledge of computers.

A large number of market analysis techniques are related to sales forecasting, others are more general techniques for analyzing markets. The literature defines several areas in which market analysis is important. These include: sales forecasting, market research, and marketing strategy. Sales forecasting and market analysis are complementary skills that any marketing manager should possess.

[edit] References

• George J. Kress, and John Snyder, Forecasting and Market Analysis Techniques: A Practical Approach (Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1994)