Unless you've got a robust approach to understanding the fundamentals of your market then your strategy and all that follows is based on a bad foundation. Market-Quadrangulation™ is GrowThink's approach to ensuring the best input to your strategic decisions.
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When you're trying to understand how your company fits into its markets then it's easy to purchase an off the shelf report and think job done. There is a better way which takes a little longer but provides a more useful set of insights.
Called Market-Quadrangulation™ it takes existing knowledge that's present in your business (CAPTURE) and uses three additional processes (EXTERNALISE, POSITION/CONTEXT & CHALLENGE) to effectively give you four data points to accurately position yourself. Think of it as a surveyor using four points to ensure they are laying a foundation stone for a building (your strategy!) rather than just plonking a stake in the ground based on a rough guess.
The process typically works as follows:
CAPTURE all the existing information on your market from internal sources such as your sales team, marketing teams, senior management etc. This is your starting point, your existing perception of the market
EXTERNALISE this insight with secondary studies and market data from free sources such as government agencies, trade bodies or other online resources. Then if you still need to know more consider purchasing an existing market report
POSITION/CONTEXT all of this data against the competitive and PEEST environments (Political/Legal, Environmental, Economic, Social, Technological) to ensure your initial analysis holds true e.g. does your market report suggest Chinese market is on rise but the latest news reports suggest there is a glut of supply which means you might want to question this assumption? This is Quadrangulation™ in action - use one source to check against another
By now using three areas we are starting to get confidence in our assumptions on things like market size, growth rate, segmentation etc. The next stage of CHALLENGING is important to make sure we haven't overlooked a key point that'll impact on strategy. Sometimes a quick run through of our findings with an expert in the field or commissioning a simple primary study to test your position are invaluable
By now you should have a very robust view of your market and where you're positioned. It'll be open to defence especially if you've captured all the information in a data framework with references sources. If you're using this as the basis of your strategy decisions you're on firm ground. If you're using the data to ask for more funding or even as data to support the sale of your business it'll stand up to scrutiny from the most detailed of analysts
GrowThink are sticklers for ensuring the fundamentals of your strategy are sound. This is the reason we take such a robust approach to market positioning. We appreciate not everyone has the time or resource to do this in-house though. Give us a call on +44 (0)7770 325 252 if you need our help.
Our rates are highly competitive compared to some of the bigger research houses - especially as they often don't get to know your market as well as we do.