Importance of estimation of market potential : a case of Sandvik Tooling

Sammanfattning: Abstract   Title: Importance of estimation of market potential- a case of Sandvik Tooling   Level: Bachelor Degree in BusinessAdministration, 15 ECTS-Credits in Marketing   Author: Mi Tegnér   Supervisor: Akmal Hyder   Date: 2011-05   Aim: The aim of this thesis is to study in which waySandvik Tooling and certain other international companies’ measure and estimatethe market potential   Method: I have used a qualitative method. This meansthat I have focused on the big picture rather than solely on parts from thecollected material. The qualitative method was based on interviews with 12respondents, both within Sandvik AB and with employees from other internationalcompanies. Furthermore, I have made an interconnection between my empirical andtheoretical part in order to draw conclusions on the findings.   Result & Conclusions: The study shows some importantfactors, which may affect a company´s effort to measure and estimate the marketpotential. They are; gaps may easily appear when customers and companies havedifferent views on quality, price and productivity, too large amounts ofinformation, the importance of new ideas and perspectives. A company canminimize their problems and any errors within the collected material if theywork after similar framework, consisting of clear structures and methodologies.   Suggestions for future research: Future research could be to do asimilar study, to identify methods to measure and estimate market potential forSandvik Tooling but within an international setting. Then compare this resultwith my result to see in which way the perception of market potential differsin the different countries.   Contribution of the thesis: From my research, I have got an understandingthat the process of measuring and estimating companies market potential is notan easy mission. Especially among the companies, which consist of differentbusiness areas, product areas and segment areas. I hope the study will beinteresting for the employee´s working with market potential and businessdevelopment, to see that people within the same company may have differentviews about this subject. I also believe that managers in general would benefitfrom this study, to understand that their employees would like to see a moresimilar framework within the company, when it comes to measure and estimatemarket potential. During this thesis, I found a deficiency of scientificarticles about the subject, measuring a company´s market potential. It had beeninteresting to see if my results corresponded to previous results in the samesubject.   Key words: business areas, benchmarking, estimation,market potential, market shares, measuring