Some people just follow others when it comes to investment. You watch your neighbour making money from his trucking business and you join in. You hear others at the pub discussing about the profitability of the quail projects and you just follow.
Now the practice of following others is a risky one, some could be making money using some businesses as a cover. As witnessed in 2016, some business like the Quails Project which took Zimbabwe by storm maybe subject to a ban. Imagine the losses encountered last year by someone who took out a loan to venture into a Quails Project?
So before investing one need to carry out a detailed study of the sector to invest in. You cannot just invest without sufficient information because this increases the risk of failure. One way to obtain information is through market survey reports.
Let’s say you would like to invest in the manufacturing of a new soft drink in Zimbabwe. The following information will be key in your investment decision
- The state of the economy and projections for the future
- Performance of the soft drinks sector in the country and the region
- The size of the soft drinks market, market trends and market growth
- Consumer preferences and change in tastes
- The effect of changes in the economy to the profitability of the soft drinks sector
- Competitors in the industry and level of competition
- Current Challenges and Opportunities
The information I have given you above is just basic, I can add more if I had time. The bottom line here is that you need the above information in order to:
- Gain competitive intelligence about market leaders
- Track key industry trends, opportunities and threats
- Inform your marketing, brand, strategy and market development, sales and supply functions
This information will assist you in decision making to establish whether to pour in funds for investment into a project or not. Accountants would carry out detailed investment appraisals to determine whether the project would bring a good return on investment or not.
This is a systematic way of investment which reduces the chances of venturing into a project which may be facing a ban or is on a downward trend. You will have a helicopter view of what affects an industry, who are the key players, whether they are making money or not as well as whether an industry has room for more entrants.
So where can you get this information? One easy way is to buy market research reports. How much would it cost you? Currently pricey-it will cost you an arm and a leg. ZBIN Solution-Our solution which is coming in the next few months is that we will be providing detailed market research reports. Some of the reports will be for sale and a few available for free to our members. We hope to ensure that the reports will be available at affordable rates so that the guy in Siyaso can access them. This should save members from investing funds in projects that seem profitable on paper but loss making in reality.
