From this chart you can see that most people who take part in outdoor activities purchase equipment about every 6 months. This is important because if on average each person is only making an important purchase twice a year then my store must be able to
appeal to a lot of different, so that it can make enough money to survive. This means that I must have a lot of different customers visiting my store. Also, 21% of people, according to my results, do not actually buy equipment at all, and 25% of people only buy once per year. The remaining 17% of people are comparatively regular buyers, and I will have to try and win them over from wherever they are shopping now.
I next found out where people shopped at the moment, and again displayed my results in the form of a pie chart. From this you see that both Millets and Halfords make up almost half of the results. From this you can assume that because Halfords specialises
in bikes, that most of the people who shop there, are buying equipment
for mountain bikes, however Millets is a much more general store and sell many different pieces of equipment. Sportsworld make up the largest proportion of people, as they sell most
of the basic equipment you need for any sporting activity. This information is important as it gives me a good idea in what I should sell more or less of in my shop. Unfortunately I did not gather data on exactly what people buy from these shops, as this would have helped me further in this area.
I also had to find out why exactly people buy from these places, so I did some research into that. I found that from a sample of 32 people, the largest percentage of people said that the reason they bought from where they did
was because they had a wide range of products. This is good as a wide range, and ability to supply for as many activities as possible will be one of the main focuses of my store. From these results, you can also see that geographical location, low prices, and the quality of goods are all about as important as each other. Helpful staff is only actually important in certain types of shop; for example, a bank would require employees with a good knowledge of how the banking system, and the bank would not run properly without them possessing that knowledge. On the other hand, a supermarket only needs people who can work a till. My shop would not need skilled employees, so as the results show, helpful staff is not as important in this field.
The last piece of information I required was what could be improved about where people shop at the moment. From the same sample of people, I found that the area that most people felt could be improved upon was price. This was unfortunate, as this was also an area where my store could not compete with more
established traders. The next two points though were good areas that would be possible for me to use to gain advantage over other stores; location, and the range of products. I have already said that a wide range is an area on which I intend to do well in, however well situated premises are difficult to come by, and are often expensive.
The data which I have gathered is reliable, however I think that it could have been presented win a better way, as I did not present it in such a way so that I could make links between the individual charts. Overall I think I have achieved my two objectives, and my research will be very helpful in opening up my business.
