E N V I R O N M E N T A L A N A LY S I S A NICHE MARKET RESEARCH 8 ACT: FIND NICHE
As Chris Ducker, finding a niche market is crucial. We identified our audience as private buyers who buy small quantities for own use, as well as professional buyers who buy larger quantities for company’s events or as promotional gift. Also restaurants and caterers are within our target audience. We will focus on the products these customers prefer. So we used Google Adwords to check which search terms are popular to define which products that are often searched for on the internet. We will limit our research to Belgium. “Wijn” and “wijnen” are very popular search terms. Together they are used almost 16 thousand times per month on average. There is a peak in December with 40,000 searches. Red wine is searched for more than white wine on Google. The amount of competitors is higher for red wine than for white wine. But both have a Cost per Click (CPC) higher than 1. This means the competition in this market is quite high. Wine accessories are less searched for on the Internet. “Kurkentrekker” is searched for 20 times on average per month. “Wijnaccessoires” is with 110 slightly more popular. With both products, we can also see a significant peak in December. But in general, these products might be less attractive in a web shop. There is however a lower amount of competition present in this market. Also a popular search term combination is “wijn bij”. This search term also has very little competition. Knowing this, it might be attractive to give wine suggestions for different foods such as “mosselen” “kreeft” and “kalkoen”. Doing this might reach 600 extra people per month extra on average. The most searched word combination related to wine is “wijn colruyt”. This means Colruyt dominates the online wine market. There already is an existing market. Colruyt, who has a similar business model as us, is a proof of existing Internet buyers. When looking at Google trends, the rising interest each December is confirmed. Also the popularity has been steady with a decreasing trend. Since 2005 the peak in December shrunk about 30%. The search term is twice
as
popular
in
the
Netherlands
than
it
is
in
Belgium.