The Internet is a wealth of resources that are waiting for you to do the searching. Research is one of the best and most useful activities to engage in during the time period before you open your doors for business. The stronger your foundation of knowledge is, the easier it is to build on that knowledge with experience that leads to profitability. Look at your business idea from multiple perspectives. Try to understand the customer as well as the company. You also want a general idea of who your collaborators are in the business, and also do market research to understand your competition. You could even become a temporary consumer of the competition to understand their business from the end-user’s perspective.
But the research can also be confusing, especially to the novice. Which resources are the best, and how can you tell the difference between resources that give mediocre information and resources that give excellent information? The following is a short list of resources to help guide you in your research process when you start to investigate the costs of starting a particular type of business.
SCORE: SCORE is short for “Service Corps of Retired Executives.” This national organization is sponsored by the U.S. Small Business Administration. This organization has over 13,000 members who are all a wealth of information to both the new and experienced entrepreneur. SCORE provides workshops, mentoring, training, and free counseling to new and existing small businesses. Volunteers can help identify problems, determine the cause, and help devise solutions to those problems. Any small business can get help from SCORE volunteers, and the business does not need to have any affiliation with the Small Business Administration to receive counseling and training. For more information, check out http://www.SCORE.org.
Economic Research: You can do this research yourself, or hire a professional to do the research; this research covers a very wide range of categories. If you have the extra capital, it may be worthwhile to hire an independent market research firm. What you want to find out is general trends in the market and industry of your interest. You will examine locations for your business and the areas around them, and try to observe the fluctuations and patterns in customer interest at various points. You just want to understand the market and your potential place within that system.
The Federal Government is a wealth of knowledge because they fund numerous research studies annually. Both federal and state governments spend billions of dollars on research every year, but wading through all the publications can be confusing to the novice researcher. See the article about Federal Information Sources for more information.
State and Local Agencies are a great resource of information about local businesses and success rates. State agencies and nonprofit organizations are often very willing to help the small business owner in numerous types of situations with lots of different types of information. State and local agencies are the best, if not the only, source of information about your immediate area.
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