Page 208 - 1-Entrepreneurship and Local Economic Development by Norman Walzer (z-lib.org)

Understanding and Growing a Community’s Microbusiness Segment 197

These questions can often be addressed with specific types of market
analysis.
Retail trade analysis uses Census data and community-specific sales tax
data to analyze markets. This type of analysis is often called gap analysis and
is offered by consulting firms and groups such as the Cooperative Extension
Service (Barta and Woods 2001). Local businesses use this type of market
analysis to identify potential opportunities. Communities use the same in-
formation to build local support for entrepreneurial and small business ef-
forts.
Additional market analyses may also be useful. The gap described above
in Barta and Woods (2001) often relies on secondary data such as popula-
tion from the U.S. Bureau of Census or sales tax data provided by a state
agency. Often, primary data is useful for a local market analysis. Surveys of
local residents can be organized and conducted.
Another method to gather information may involve convening focus
groups, representing audiences like homeowners, young people, or ethnic
groups, to collect data. The key to reliable and useful results in both these
and other primary data collection methods is careful survey design,
methodology, and data analysis. These primary survey efforts have proven
to be useful market analysis tools for businesses and communities (Fisher
and Woods 1987).
Marketing techniques including product packaging and visual merchan-
dising are included in the request for assistance. Visual merchandising can
be for the product itself as well as for the overall effect of the store. One in-
novative effort involves a visual merchandising class offered at Oklahoma
State University. Student teams work with the owners of main street busi-
nesses in rural communities. These firms have requested assistance in im-
proving some aspect of visual merchandising, from window displays to in-
store displays to store arrangement. The students receive a real-world
experience, and the firms receive valuable assistance and expertise in visual
merchandising techniques (Muske, Jin, and Yu 2004). Related to this is a
visual merchandising educational program that merchants might desire.
The visual merchandising program was in response to a rural community
request for help for its main street merchants to attract more of the nearly
two million visitors that visited a national recreation area on the edge of
town. The effort, an example of the Kellogg Foundation’s (2004) report en-
couraging the “engaged institution,” has since become a regular class of-
fered each semester. Except for a small amount of seed money, the program
has become self-sufficient. Information on how the program might be du-
plicated has been provided to other states.
Yet visual merchandising can represent more than just the appearance of
one store. It also covers how the community presents itself to visitors as well
as to local residents. Such efforts can be enhanced through programs such