Identifying customers 

One of our first steps in sustainable tourism planning and development is to analyse the existing market and define a target market. Often we find that small to medium enterprises (SME’s) have limited understanding of markets, which limits their ability to design and market their products. To help destinations and SME’s identify existing markets, we first help them learn how to use tools that analyse their existing customers and identify potential target markets.

Introducing potential new technologies to remote located small businesses in Venezuela

Someone wise and practical once said “You can’t be all things to all people”. From this comes the concept of a target market – choosing to promote to parts of the population that are most likely to want what you can offer.

Our capacity building uses some simple techniques like this to get organizations thinking about who they should target, and who they should not

We can help our clients identify their target markets using the simple demographics (age, income, origin) or the more complex psychographics (values, attitudes, preferred media and preferred experiences).

We want to make sure that our clients choose target markets that their promotion and distribution systems can realistically access. Our overall approach is to consider what is already being used in the local area, and try to add value to this.

Price sensitivity analysis

We also help SME’s understand how interested markets are in their products, and what might hold them back from becoming a customer and how price sensitive they are.

Our price sensitivity analysis techniques used in capacity building are visual, simple and powerful

Demand analysis

Demand analysis is usually requested as part of a feasibility process to test the merits of an idea or initiative, or to test alternatives. Our real strength in this area is our combination of communication expertise between the client and consumer and our technical expertise in tourism to interpret demand into a pragmatic conclusion.

The most cost effective service we offer is analysis of existing market research trends. We can examine local, State or National studies and extrapolate trends and relationships that can be indirectly applied to a situation. We can also analyse motivations, satisfactions, visitor spend patterns, occupancy, average room rates and a host of other operational data that suggests what customers want and don?t want. This desktop study can be a useful preliminary exploration that provides directional guidance rather than confirmation. We can also statistically analyse raw data to further interrogate research and extrapolate relationships that have not been examined before. For example, we might compare demand or satisfaction between different market segments.

We have partnerships with several market research firms that we regularly use as either a one stop shop or a supplier of participants. We usually find the best value we can give our client is for us to:

• Define the markets needing to be procured
• Liaise with a market research company to procure a sample of the markets
• Structure the topics and questions for exploration
• Generate visual aids to assist the discussion
• Locate or provide a venue for the focus group sessions
• Facilitate the focus groups and record the session
• Analyse the results and write a report to the client that includes recommendations

We interpret powerful market trend data that can help make decisions more confidently.

This approach gives the client greater value in ensuring that the right questions are asked. Contracting a market research company to do all the work means the client needs to explain the technical aspects needing to be explored to an individual with limited knowledge of the subject.

Product market match

One area frequently under developed in tourism planning and development is the relative matching of markets to core products. We take our demand analysis and link it with product analysis to draw conclusions about the relative strength of what is currently and proposed to be offered. This is much more empowering to our clients and their stakeholders than just a massive description of current markets or even market qualitative testing.

Product market match of Kapunda / Burra core products to target markets

xxx       Strong match
xx         Modest match
x           Limited match

SWOT Analysis

We target the more motivated local and regional networks with workshops to help us analyse a destinations’ markets. A key step in these workshops is an analysis of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.