By Samuel Ogenyi, Uyo
A business management expert, Ofonime Eset has identified misinformation as well as lack of proper feasibility studies as the main causes of business failures in Nigeria.
He has also said that the ‘crash and burn’ business operations in Nigeria has taken a toll not only on the individuals and companies but on the dwindling economy of the nation at large.
Eset who is the Chief Operating Officer of MarketInsight Nigeria Ltd, an online market research service platform, in an interaction with journalists in Uyo, yesterday called on business owners, companies or intending businessmen to seek information in their areas of interest which would guide them to make informed decisions.
“The reason why people experience crash and burn or keep on failing in their business is not because they are not good at what they do, but because they are not informed, they didn’t get the right knowledge or the right information.
“Most times, people make decisions based on emotions, a business that works in Abuja does not mean it must work in Uyo for instance. A particular business may thrive in a particular location or State and may not do the same in another place.
“Also some businesses are not required to be launched in a particular scale; the simple rule is to make sure that, what comes in, in terms of profit is higher than what goes out to avoid business crash.” He explained.
Speaking on the online market research service platform, Eset said the platform is focused on organizations or companies looking to gather insight of the Nigerian market by conducting competitive market analysis, product research and market trend analysis through the online portal www.marketresearch.com.ng
He noted that gathering real market data in Nigeria for new product development or making market entry decisions to would involve activities such as creating questionnaires, deciding on segments of the population to get data from, deciding what good looks like in terms of expected outcomes, talking to respondents either by conducting face to face interviews, phone interviews or focus groups.
He added that once the data are collected, and analysed, they must be made into formats which offer actionable insights.
“We have seen different organizations struggle with gathering data on the streets in Nigeria, some small organizations don’t have the manpower or resources to carry out the activities involved. Most organizations don’t conduct market research, the ones that do cannot get meaningful insights out of the data they generated. These are problems we are looking to solve with our online platform.
“The market research service is offered through the online platform where organizations of any size can create their research projects with screener questions, scale based, multi choice or other types of questions. Upon completion of the project creation and adding of different types of questions, the project creator submits the project to kickstart the research service.
“The questions submitted are then taken by respondents of MarketInsight Nig Ltd and the appropriate research methodology and service is applied to ensure the organization gets meaningful insights. Upon completion of the research project, the organization is sent the analysis for their use.” Eset concluded.
