So how do you spot market trends?

Take fashion goods, many big companies use North Eastern England as their testing ground before deciding whether or not to roll out on nationwide basis.

David Lewis who runs a marketing consultancy said: Key to success is to find out what's going on in the marketplace and this means being out in the filed and listen to what people are saying.

It's no secret amongst savvy Internet marketers that when considering developing a product or service you can research the Internet to find out the keywords people are searching on the search engines and by going to book stores and looking at magazines that people are spending money on.

David Lewis said big companies employ people called "cool hunters" to find out what's going on in the market place and owners of small companies have to be their own cool hunters.

Lewis also said to find out what customers are thinking you need to do what they do: read the same magazine, join the same clubs and frequent the same places they do.

Once you've done your discovery in identifying a trend the next step is to get the timing right and this often means being second to market. Being second rather than first to market means you let the big company prove the market and incur the development and marketing costs from which your small small company can reap the benefits.

For more information on how small businesses can take advantage of market trends read the full article
on How to take advantage of a new market trend

David
Small business Resource