Gaining a Competitive Edge: Leveraging Conferences for Market Research
When you own and run a small business within the retail sector, you’re navigating an industry that has its fair share of unique challenges and potential barriers to growth. Being able to gain a competitive edge that helps you stand out and command attention from your ideal customer base is an important component of your current and future success.
Part of gaining a competitive edge comes in extensive market research – understanding your customers and their pain points, having a solid idea of your direct and indirect competitors, understanding your operational challenges and how to overcome them, and much more.
One great setting for undertaking extensive market research is through retail-focused conferences, such as Retail Fest. You can spend time around peers and competitors, gain essential insights through keynotes and workshops, and simply take time to learn about other retail businesses and what they’ve done to succeed in the face of stiff competition.
Market Research Through Retail Conferences for SME
When attending a retail conference such as Retail Fest, you have ample opportunity to identify industry trends and emerging markets, gain competitive intelligence, and find ways of strategically positioning your business to flourish against a sea of competitors.
So, let’s take a look at key competitive insights and opportunities that exist at retail conferences.
Industry Trends and Emerging Markets
Retail conferences are where retail professionals and adjacent service providers deliver their insights into what’s happening in the retail sector now and into the future.
Knowing what’s coming within your industry, including innovations or events that could lead to disruption, will always help you better position yourself to weather the storms of any major industry upset.
Think, for example, of how the events of 2020 fundamentally changed how many retail businesses approached their e-commerce services. Those who hadn’t already adapted to an online shopping experience were left at a significant competitive disadvantage when an unexpected global event caused a fundamental shift in the retail experience.
Of course, disruptions like these are rare, but they speak to how one shift in an industry can lead to a broader unravelling of a business’s ongoing success.
Along with the myriad possible forms of disruption – natural or manmade – there’s also the inevitable reality that industries are constantly evolving. New markets emerge frequently, and larger e-commerce platforms can seemingly rise out of nowhere and impact smaller operations (think of newer e-commerce behemoths like Temu or Shein).
Retail conferences for small businesses can be an essential place to identify which industry trends and emerging markets have the highest likelihood of impacting your competitive resilience. You can gain these insights through keynotes, workshops, networking with fellow business owners, and then assessing the key points that were touched on the most throughout the conference.
Optimising Your Operations for Competitive Resilience - Keynotes and Workshops
Every keynote and workshop that is hosted at Retail Fest exists to help businesses improve their operations and build greater resilience against direct and indirect competitors. But they’re also about improving your customer relationships, identifying external barriers to success and, once again, gaining a deeper understanding of current industry trends and emerging markets.
When attending a retail conference, make sure you do some research beforehand to identify the keynotes and workshops you absolutely must attend. For example, if you feel as though one of your business’s key competitive weaknesses is how your online shopping works, then you’d want to attend workshops and keynotes that directly provide guidance and education on refining and streamlining your e-commerce efforts.
Being honest about your business’s strengths and weaknesses will allow you to optimise your conference experience. You’ll be attending the presentations that are most essential to your business and will allow you to fill in the operational gaps that you feel are holding your competitive resilience back.
You can also learn new techniques on how to market your business in ways that could help you stand out. When you’re a small business, you don’t have to be dominating your competition – it can be as simple as identifying what it is that you do differently and how to market the value of those differences to prospects.
Finally, keynotes and workshops can be a great source of information to ready yourself for incoming shifts in your industry and potential emerging markets that could introduce new types of competition.
Network for Competitive Intelligence and Strategic Positioning
Any conference worth its salt will devote key chunks of time to networking. This can be during set lunches and drinks or even by walking the exhibition floor to see which competitors or peers are exhibiting.
Networking is such an important cornerstone to success. You want to have connections and the ability to form business relationships that lead to reciprocal benefits. It also provides a means for you to get into the nitty gritty with other retail professionals.
How do they position their products and services? What pain points do they address? How do they market themselves to their customers? What’s their unique selling proposition? What have they found to work that helps them stay competitively viable in an ever-changing marketplace?
Of course, not every retail business owner will be forthcoming with this information, but you’d be surprised by how many candid conversations you can have while networking – even if you’re talking with a direct competitor.
You also have the chance to develop partnerships with other retail businesses. When businesses collaborate, it can often help them increase their overall resilience in a competitive industry. It can also be an effective means of strategic positioning, as you can help them provide products or services they’re not able to and vice versa.
Also, don’t forget to have conversations with your indirect competitors or adjacent service providers. For example, you could have a chat with a digital marketing provider who could help you identify numerous ways in which you could improve your online presence and reach.
Networking can truly expand your competitive capabilities, whether that’s in the form of potential strategic partnerships or simply getting insight into how your peers and competitors navigate the many pitfalls that can emerge in retail.
If you’re looking to expand your competitive knowledge and better position your business for success, attending a retail conference for SMEs is an absolute must. You’ll earn invaluable insights and techniques into gaining a genuine competitive advantage over just a few days.Retail Fest 2025 will be happening between 28 – 30 May, and you can buy tickets right now. We hope to see you there!