Estimating Market Penetration of a New Service

Question

Regarding business model: How do you estimate market penetration on a "new/different" service that people do not currently use?  Is that changing behavior?

Answer

I’d suggest looking at the closest analog and estimating substitution/adoption rates.  People will substitute one product or service for another if the differences promise a better value proposition.  For example, when you introduce Service X into a market dominated by Service Y and Service Y has 10,000 customers, you would likely estimate the market size based upon the estimated percentage of those customers that might switch to Service X based upon market survey data.  If you surveyed 100 consumers and 20 said they might try Service X, I’d use a more conservative assumption of 10% (since there is a high survey error rate as survey takers will tend to give you the answer they think you want to hear and when push comes to shove, they might not switch after all).  Therefore the estimate for Service X would be 10% of 10,000 or 1,000 customers.

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