What is the principle of market forecasting?

Prophets for the future are not just what human beings yearn for, so predictions have long existed, including the myth that "knowing 500 years later will know 500 years ago", so predictions have been reduced to a disgraceful predecessor, called "divination".

If an enterprise can achieve a certain degree of foresight, the benefits to its operation are of course self-evident. Of course, it is impossible to make a complete prediction, otherwise everyone is a millionaire and every enterprise is thriving.

Although enterprises are uncertain about the future, the progress of human understanding and thinking has made people discover the importance of law. The ancients have long said that "Tao" is the law. With the accumulation of historical experience and the progress of science and technology, the ability of human beings to understand nature has been greatly enhanced. As an enterprise, discovering, understanding and applying "laws" (including market, customers, technology and enterprise development) will definitely increase the chances of winning.

Basic principles of prediction

In the simplest terms: it is the following mode.

Law, trend, logic, experience and essence are the ability and means to analyze problems.

Four principles of editing

Prediction itself depends on mathematics, statistics and other methodologies and advanced means. Let's not talk about technology and methods. For managers of enterprises, the first concern may be how to form an effective way of thinking. The following principles may be instructive:

Relevant principles

Based on the thinking height of "classification", it pays attention to the correlation between things (categories). When we know (or assume) that something has changed, we can infer the changing trend of another thing.

The most typical correlations are positive correlation and negative correlation. In thinking, it is not entirely data correlation, but more "qualitative".

(1) Positive correlation is the "promotion" between things, such as the average income of residents and "the number of air conditioners owned by 100 households"; Some enterprises realize that "the only child is valued" and infer the market of toys, education-related products and services; A district government has repeatedly asked enterprises a question: "What opportunities will people's material and cultural living standards bring?" This is actually the biggest opportunity facing the unknown market at present! The "household appliances industry", "kitchen revolution" and "health care products" that have been developed in this respect should be the result of full understanding and careful implementation. This also reflects the opportunity consciousness of enterprises. According to the survey conducted, some experts suggest that those materials are the "treasures" of enterprises, depending on how you know them. One of the biggest opportunities for large furniture enterprises to start a business is that "these people born in the third birth wave in China have reached the peak of marriage and entrepreneurship".

(2) Negative correlation refers to the mutual "restriction" between things, and the development of one thing leads to the restriction of another. Especially "substitutes". For example, the introduction of resource policies and environmental protection policies will inevitably lead to the emergence of "disposable resources" substitutes, such as PVC plastic steel developed by "replacing wood with steel"; A moped was forced to be scrapped in a certain place, and an "electric bicycle" enterprise there also keenly seized this opportunity.

inertia

Everything has a certain inertia, that is, it keeps its original trend and state at a certain time and under certain conditions, which is also the theoretical basis of most traditional forecasting methods. Such as "linear regression" and "trend extrapolation".

Analogy principle

Market forecast related chart

Market forecast related chart

This principle is also based on the thinking height of "classification" and pays attention to the correlation between things.

(1) from small to large-infer the general trend of things from a certain phenomenon: for example, existing people start buying private cars, what do you foresee? In this way of thinking, we should avoid replacing the surface with points and generalizing the whole.

(2) From the outside to the inside-from the superficial phenomenon to the essence: For example, what does Wuxi's "Chinese extraction noodles" achieve in building a "unified food" in Kunshan? "Hailier" washing powder went to South Jiangsu for promotion, and "Jiajia Washing Powder" realized that it might be to grab the market. Let's take the simplest example: the emergence of disposable liquid lighters is indeed an example in which match factories are unaware of the threat.

(3) The introduction of foreign advanced management and technology can also be explained by this idea. You remember one sentence: what is eliminated in developed areas may have a market in backward areas.

(4) Mao Zedong once said: I am not Li Zicheng. It can be seen that historical things are of great guiding significance to the future development. In other words: Who dares to think that their home has air conditioning, computers and telephones? We asked: Can you imagine that you will have your own car in 10 years? This kind of reasoning is quite enlightening for merchants. Can you summarize the development law of home TV in China? Perhaps, you can find business opportunities from it!

(5) From far to near-for example, foreign products, technologies, management models, marketing experience and methods, because they may be advanced, represent the advanced direction, which may be "the way to go tomorrow".

(6) Bottom-up —— Inferring the overall situation from typical parts, a medium-sized town needs three harvesters, and there are 50 similar towns in this county. It can be preliminarily estimated that the possible market capacity of harvesters in this county is 150.

(7) Top-down-subdividing from the whole, so as to know and infer a part. For example, in a city with 400,000 people, 400,000-200,000 women (excluding 65,438+people under 02 and over 50 years old) and 654,38+people, the market capacity of women's bicycles-survey 1000 women's riding rate (assuming 60%)- is 60,000. It is helpful to have a general understanding of a market.

probabilistic reasoning

We can't fully grasp the future, but according to experience and history, we can often roughly estimate the probability of a thing happening and take corresponding measures according to this possibility. Poker, chess games, and enterprise decision-making based on game are unconsciously using this principle. Sometimes we can determine the possibility of a certain situation through scientific methods such as sampling design and investigation.