 Namaskar, I am Prabhupada Devade Purkayastha from IIT Bombay. Welcome to my course, Business Fundamental for Entrepreneurs Part 2, External Operations. This is the first module of a four-week, eight-module course. This module is about how do you study markets and competitors? But before I get into the module itself, let me share with you the overall discussion flow for the course. So today, we'll start with the big picture of how do you research the market, how do you research competitors and players and products and technologies? In the next session, we'll drill down into customers and customer segments, which is very important to build your business. After that, we'll get into marketing, value-based marketing, and then the elements of marketing communication, branding, positioning, advertising, etc. Once you do that, in week three, we'll get into sales channel and distribution as well as selling. So you move from marketing into selling. In the final week, week four, we'll talk about customer service and customer loyalty and customer advocacy, and how do you make sure customers stay with you for always? And then the challenges of supply chain. So this is the course flow, and today's module, here is the flow of topics. So we'll start with basics of what is marketing research, and then I will talk you through why do you need market research? What are the methodologies and ways of researching the market? And then if you choose a career in market research, which can be a very rewarding career, what are the skills that you need to develop? Let's start with what is market research? Market research is a systematic study of markets and trends, emerging trends in the market, because customer habits and markets always change. So how do you research that? Also how you research customers and your competitors and products and the technologies that lead to better and better products. So why do you want to do market research? The objective of market research is to help companies and market years to better understand and fulfill the need of the customers. Because customers have needs and we'll talk about them. And market research helps to fulfill those customer needs. Market research can also importantly help you understand threats to your business. New competitors, new technologies, new products, which can almost destroy your business. And finally, a study of emerging technologies can actually help you create better products or improve your product offering. So let's start diving into why market research. Let's look back a bit and look at famous brands and famous companies and famous products which have failed. And I've got a few examples here and you may know of many more. The first is Kodak. Through the early 20th century, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, etc., Kodak was synonymous with photography, Kodak films. And it almost was a near monopoly. But that brand died. Because they could not adapt to newer camera forms and newer ways of photography such as electronics cameras and phone cameras. Another brand, Nokia, a very famous dominant phone brand with huge market shares in India and outside of India. And it failed maybe because the management lost touch with the emerging trends, emerging technologies that Apple and others brought into the market. And emerging need of the customer because by that time iPhone, etc., would give you the swipe feature. And there are other stories like that, Motorola, BlackBerry, which is one of the first smartphones, but it died. Commodore was a huge personal computing brand before the IBM PCs, etc., came on. But it failed maybe because the management lost sight of what's happening in the market or new products and new technologies. But it is only for technology products that we need market research. Let's look at data in India. So this is a Nielsen study which was published in Economic Times and it talked about FMCG, fast moving consumer products, soaps, detergents, shampoos, etc. What is the rate of product failures? And if you can read what's on the screen, only 0.14% as reported by the Economic Times, only 0.14% of all the products that were launched succeeded. Failure rates are very high. So there are large companies, global companies and Indian companies which actually research the market and the customers and the consumers and products and technologies and trends. And some of these are Nielsen, Kantar, Ipsos, Gartner, etc. And we can go to the websites and look up what they do. And essentially what they do is they provide market research data to large companies like retailers or manufacturers. So that's why you need market research with companies, that's why companies need market research. And that's what this big global market research companies do. What is the process? What is the process of market research? And I'll talk you through a definition of what is research, whom to research, how to research, when to research, how do you analyze your research findings, and then what kind of skills you need to build. So let me take you through the market research process and the journey that you may want to embark on. So what to research? It could be a basic business problem that all companies face. Maybe the market shares, the share of the market for your company is falling. Why is it falling? Maybe your volumes and revenues are not growing as fast. Why are they not growing as fast? Maybe the pricing and the profits are low or falling. Why? Maybe new products and players have come to the market. Who are they? What do they do? Are they better than me? Are they better than my future plans? And there can be trends in the market or in customer and consumer habits. And there can be new technologies which are coming up. So these are the business problems that you may want to research. And then you have got customer specific questions that you may want to ask. What are the needs of the customers that are not being met by current players, current companies, current products? Are the customers satisfied or dissatisfied? Because if customers are dissatisfied with another company's product, it is an opportunity for you either as a startup or as an employee to meet that need which nobody else is meeting. But you need to research that. And then how do customers actually use your product? Because once you understand the usage and habits, you can keep adding features and benefits to your products. So these are some of the things that you can research. And then the next question is, whom do you research? Of course you research consumers to see what they are using, how are they using, how often are they using? What price are they willing to pay? Customers. So consumers are the users. So it could be you who is watching this video or me, we consume the product. Customers are basically retailers who are buying from the manufacturers and selling to consumers like you and me. So it could be a Kirana store, it could be a modern trade, it could be an e-commerce site. So you need to research them and find out what are they selling? Channels. We'll talk a lot about channels in one of the future sessions. But channels is all about traditional small stores or malls or e-commerce platforms. These are channels. What are they doing? Companies. Who are the companies in your industry who can impact your business? Who are the companies who are not today in your line of business but may enter and threaten your business? Categories. Categories are basically collection of FMCG goods. Soaps is a category. Shampoo is a category. Within that category of shampoo, let's say, there are brands like Head and Shoulder or Pantene or Clinic or Dove. But the entire category is declining or growing. Your brand will also get impacted. So you can't just look at your brand, you have to look at the category itself, which is a collection of all the brands for the consumer. You also have to look at countries. A, because if you're successful in India, which countries can you go out to? And B, are there companies in other countries of Malaysia or Indonesia or US or Western Europe that can come into India and threaten your business? Communicators are basically television or social media influencers, etc., who are communicating and talking about different brands, different businesses all the time to the common public. And you need to keep a track on what are the TV channels doing? What are the advertisers doing? What are the social media influencers doing? And of course, colleges even. So all of you in colleges are consumers today as students. But as you grow older and become more successful, you'll consume more and more products. Today, you may not have a car. You may buy a car one or two years later. You may not have a house today. You may buy a house five years or ten years later. You also need to, therefore, research what's happening in the colleges. So this is whom to research. I talked about what to research, whom to research. So let me give an example of some of the questions that you can ask, specific questions that you can research. You can read it yourself on the screen, but let me call out one or two that's on the screen. For example, if you're working for a company, you may want to research what is a market share? Is it 10% of the market, 20% of the market, 50%, 70% of the market? Are you growing? Are you going 50%, 55%, 60% or are you declining? Is it 50%, 45%, 40%? And if you are losing, who is gaining? And if you're gaining, who else is losing? Because the market is totally 100 and you have a share of the market. You can research your competitors and ask those questions on the screen. You can look at habits of the customers, like who is currently buying your products? Men, women, old, young, rich, poor, urban people, rural people. So who's buying your products and services and why they're buying? If a product is selling well in North India and not selling in South India, why are the North Indians buying it and South Indians not buying it? So these are the research that you can do. Importantly, who's not buying from you? Because those are your opportunities. How are they buying from small stores or malls? From e-commerce sites or from the direct website, the company website? Also the prices? Are you priced too high, priced too low? If you increase your price, can you also grow your volumes so the revenues go up? Or if you increase your price, the volumes will fall. All this you have to research. Some more of those questions are put out on the screen. How can you improve your current offering? And then perception studies, if you look at the fourth paragraph, how is a brand perceived? Is it seen as a prestige brand? We'll talk a lot about branding in one of the later sessions. But how is a brand perceived? For example, if you look at apparel brands, how is Nike perceived versus Adidas? How is Levi's perceived versus Wrangler's? Cars, how is Maruti perceived versus Mahindra? How is Coca-Cola perceived versus Pepsi-Cola? It's a brand perception. So all of these questions will help you continuously build your business, your volumes, your profits, because you can proceed and make your plans scientifically based on data. And therefore you have a higher chance of success. With that, now I encourage you to reflect for three minutes. In this course, in every session, we will pause for three minutes when you can reflect and you can write down. I encourage you to have a journal for the course where you write down some of the key points and you write down what you have thought about once you've heard me speak. And I'll give you some specific questions which you can reflect on. And then after the course is over, you can go back to your journal and you can remember everything that you heard and thought of. So this is the first reflection point of the first module. And what I encourage you to do is think of a product that you would like to research. If you're an employee, you may want to research your company's product. If you're an aspiring entrepreneur, you may want to research a product that you want to launch in the market. So the question is, why do you want to research it? For what? To launch the product? To grow your sales? To grow your revenues? To find out about the customers who are using the product? Who will you research? And then draw up a list of questions that you may want to ask your customers and consumers. So what are the questions that you'll ask as part of your research? So reflect.