Market strength assessment is the assessment of the competition in a certain market to help the managers or the business owners help assess their competitions better. It helps them to take critical business decisions while analysing their surroundings. The strength assessment is done by weighing the success factors relevant to the industry and rating the companies on the basis of their implementation of such factors. This kind of assessment in quick, simple, and useful for it helps the business improve, realise its competitors, and analyse the strengths and weaknesses. For example, if a company is looking to see how far their “brand awareness” has gone, it can be done by comparing it to a competitor brand.
A unique market strength analysis was conducted by Marcus Painter, Ph.D., an assistant professor of Finance at Saint Louis University's Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business, and William Gerken, Ph.D., an associate professor of Finance at the Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky. Both Painter and Gerken analysed the number of cars in the parking lot of a retail store in different cities. It was primarily done to see how geographical diversity affected the retail shops in various locations. Painter concluded that the localities play a huge role in the sale of goods in different locations, making it difficult to forecast any consensus.
He believes that these implications play a huge role in the rapidly changing retail market and deciding their futures. He says, “First, our measure is really capturing the overall impression an analyst may have about local performance. We measure this using traffic to local stores because that's the data we have, but it's also likely capturing things like what an analyst might hear from friends and family about a company. So the results apply broadly to industries outside of retail.” Painter also compares the work of other analysts forecasting the same retail store but in a different location to analyse how their online performance differs from the performance of the physical store.
Painter has put his faith in the forecasting tool of crowd analysis, but also knows that it can often lead to inadequate estimates.
Subarna Basu