Environment and Market

One of your greatest dreams in life is to become a successful entrepreneur. As a person, you are capable of developing your character and personality and how to respond to some business challenges and opportunities. You can make things happen by identifying the opportunities around you. You may ask yourself these questions: What do people need? What products and services are available in the market today? Can they be improved? How are they made or delivered? Can things be done better? cheaper? faster? cleaner? Can a product which is used for specific purpose be also used for some other purposes?

You slowly find answers to these questions as you decide to do the first step in launching a business enterprise. Be cautious however, that you should develop a habit of identifying opportunities around you. Only then, you will find the activity both exciting and easy.

Before you proceed, answer the pre-assessment by clicking the link below.

Needs and Wants of People

Everyone has his or her own needs and wants. However, people have different concepts of needs and wants. Needs in business are important things that every individual cannot do without in a society. These include:

1. Basic commodities for consumption

2. Clothing and other personal belongings,

3. Shelter, sanitation and health

4. Education and relaxation

Basic needs are essential to every individual so he/she may be able to live with dignity and pride in the community of people. These needs can obviously help you generate business ideas.

Wants are desires, luxury and extravagance that signify wealth and an expensive way of living. Wants or desires are considered above all the basic necessities of life. Some examples are the eagerness or the passion of every individual which are non- basic needs like; fashion accessories, shoes, clothes, travelling around the world, eating in an exclusive restaurant; watching movies, concerts, plays, having luxurious cars, wearing expensive jewelry, perfume, living in impressive homes, and others.

Needs and wants of people are the basic indicators of the kind of business that you may engage into because it can serve as the measure of your success. Some other good points that you might consider in business undertakings are the kind of people, their needs, wants, lifestyle, culture and tradition, and social orientation that they belong.

Generating Ideas for Business

Here are some ways by which you may generate possible ideas for business.

1. Examine the existing goods and services. Are you satisfied with the product? What do other people who use the product say about it? How can it be improved? There are many ways of improving a product from the way it is made to the way it is packed and sold? You can also improve the materials used in crafting the product. In addition, you introduce new ways of using the product, making it more useful and adaptable to the customers’ many needs. When you are improving the product or enhancing it, you are doing an innovation. You can also do an invention by introducing an entirely new product to replace the old one.

Business ideas may also be generated by examining what goods and services are sold outside by the community. Very often, these products are sold in a form that can still be enhanced or improved.

2. Examine the present and future needs. Look and listen to what the customers, institution, and communities are missing in terms of goods and services. Sometimes, these needs are already obvious and felt at the moment. Other needs are not that obvious because they can only be felt in the future, in the event of certain developments in the community. For example, a town will have its electrification facility in the next six months. Only by that time will the entrepreneur could think of electrically- powered or generated business such as xerox copier, computer service, digital printing, etc.

3. Examine how the needs are being satisfied. Needs for the products and services are referred to as market demand. To satisfy these needs is to supply the products and services that meet the demands of the market. The term market refers to whoever will use or buy the products or service, and these may be people or institutions such as other businesses, establishments, organizations, or government agencies.

There is a very good business opportunity when there is absolutely no supply to a pressing market demand.

Businesses or industries in the locality also have needs for goods and services. Their needs for raw materials, maintenance, and other services such as selling and distribution are good sources of ideas for business.

4. Examine the available resources around you. Observe what materials or skills are available in abundance in your area. A business can be started out of available raw materials by selling them in raw form and by processing and manufacturing them into finished products. For example, in a copra-producing town, there will be many coconut husks and shells available as “waste” products. These can be collected and made into coco rags/doormat and charcoal bricks and sold profitably outside the community.

A group of people in your neighborhood may have some special skills that can be harnessed for business. For example, women in the Mountain Province possess loom weaving skills that have been passed on from one generation to the next generation. Some communities there set up weaving businesses to produce blankets, as well as decorative items and various souvenir items for sale to tourists and lowland communities.

Business ideas can come from your own skills. The work and experience you may have in agricultural arts, industrial arts, home economics, and ICT classes will provide you with business opportunities to acquire the needed skills which will earn for you extra income, should you decide to engage in income-generating activities. With your skills, you may also tinker around with various things in your spare time. Many products were invented this way.

5. Read magazines, news articles, and other publications on new products and techniques or advances in technology. You can pick up new business ideas from Newsweek, Reader’s Digest, Business Magazines, Go Negosyo, KAB materials, Small- industry Journal. The Internet serves as a library where you may browse and surf on possible businesses. It will also guide you on how to put the right product in the right place, at the right price, at the right time.

Listing of possible businesses to set up in an area may also be available from banks or local non-government organizations.

Selecting the Right Idea

Once you have embarked on identifying the business opportunities, you will eventually see that there are many possibilities that are available for you. It is very unlikely that you will have enough resources to pursue all of them at once. Which one will you choose?

You have to select the most promising one from among hundreds and one ideas. It will be good to do this in stages. In the first stage, you screen your ideas to narrow them down to about five choices. In the next stage, trim down the five choices to two options. In the final stage, choose between the two and decide which business idea worth pursuing.

In screening your ideas, examine each one in terms of the following factors:

1. How much capital is needed to put up the business?

2. How big is the demand for the product? Do many people need this product and will continue to need it for a long time?

3. How is the demand met? Who are processing the products to meet the need (competition or demand)? How much of the need is now being met (supply)?

4. Do you have the background and experience needed to run this particular business?

5. Will the business be legal, not going against any existing or foreseeable government regulation?

6. Is the business in line with your interest and expertise?

Your answers to these questions will be helpful in screening which ones from among your many ideas are worth examining further and worth pursuing.

Environmental Scanning

There is a need to conduct environmental scanning to identity the needs and wants of people, the niche for your business mission, and to give attention to trends and issues. This may also serve as an evaluation of the type of the entrepreneurial activity appropriate in the community.

Environmental scanning is defined as a process of gathering, analyzing, and dispensing information for tactical or strategic purposes. The environmental scanning process entails obtaining both factual and subjective information on the business environments in which a company is operating.

Environment in the community can be viewed according to its technological, political, economic, and social aspects. For example, in the past, people in the community used personal computers but the transmission of development in terms of technology was interrupted because people were not satisfied with what they have today. They still look for the changes in their life and the corresponding in their environment.

As a future entrepreneur, you must be well-versed in this kind of advancement and progression of your environment particularly in technology so as to secure the success of your future business. Always think of something new, something novel, authentic, reinvent the existing ones, and create your new version of goods/products, and services. For instance, your own hair straightening is herbal, while in the other salons it is made of synthetic chemicals. This kind of changes being made will effect the existing principles in business and industries that can be easily adapted to the changes in producing the products/services to meet the needs and wants of people in the community.

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