Market Research + Risk

Can YOU afford the risk?

Market research and risk is something you do not always find in the same sentence but now you have!  We all have risk within our own businesses and while we cannot be rid of them (oh, do we wish we could), we can only manage them. Failure to manage that risk can potentially harm your brand or, worse, cost you your business.

Depending on your industry and business, risks can come in all shapes and sizes such as:

• fluctuating currency exchange;
• varying legal landscapes;
• differing cultural differences and nuances;
• potential language barriers;
• training labour;
• insufficient transport and logistics solutions;
• digital security breaches; and
• protection of intellectual property (IP) and data management.

While these risks cannot be managed all at once (let’s be realistic here), it is important to remember that good risk management practice consists of taking small steps rather than being overwhelmed from the get-go.

Using good quality, third-party market research, you can identify, mitigate and prioritise risks in your business:

Understanding your market and customers helps you identify potential risks for your business, e.g. new competitors’ tactics, malicious suppliers, etc. Using this information, you can proactively develop strategies specifically targeting each of the potential risks that were identified in the research.

Ultimately, as the business owner or decision maker, you can prioritise these risks from the most pressing to the least important according to your mission, strategy and goals in the business. This could mean, for example, protecting IP around your main product (competitive advantage) is much more important than transport constraints due to a public holiday for a software company.

Depending on the industry and what your product is, risks can vary greatly between businesses. It is essential to use the power of market research to understand your markets, customers and external and internal influences to effectively identify, mitigate then prioritise your risks to avoid irreversible damage to your brand and business.

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Unlock your potential with market research.
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