【正文】 you want, precisely how you are going to use it, and how the money will make your business more profitable, thereby ensuring repayment. Page 5 of 31 III. General Company Description What business will you be in? What will you do? Mission Statement: Many panies have a brief mission statement, usually in 30 words or fewer, explaining their reason for being and their guiding principles. If you want to draft a mission statement, this is a good place to put it in the plan, followed by: Company Goals and Objectives: Goals are destinations— where you want your business to be. Objectives are progress markers along the way to goal achievement. For example, a goal might be to have a healthy, successful pany that is a leader in customer service and that has a loyal customer following. Objectives might be annual sales targets and some specific measures of customer satisfaction. Business Philosophy: What is important to you in business? To whom will you market your products? (State it briefly here— you will do a more thorough explanation in the Marketing Plan section). Describe your industry. Is it a growth industry? What changes do you foresee in the industry, short term and long term? How will your pany be poised to take advantage of them? Describe your most important pany strengths and core petencies. What factors will make the pany succeed? What do you think your major petitive strengths will be? What background experience, skills, and strengths do you personally bring to this new venture? Legal form of ownership: Sole proprietor, Partnership, Corporation, Limited liability corporation (LLC)? Why have you selected this form? Page 6 of 31 IV. Products and Services Describe in depth your products or services (technical specifications, drawings, photos, sales brochures, and other bulky items belong in Appendices). What factors will give you petitive advantages or disadvantages? Examples include level of quality or unique or proprietary features. What are the pricing, fee, or leasing structures of your products or services? Page 7 of 31 V. Marketing Plan Market research Why? No matter how good your product and your service, the venture cannot succeed without effective marketing. And this begins with careful, systematic research. It is very dangerous to assume that you already know about your intended market. You need to do market research to make sure you’re on track. Use the business planning process as your opportunity to uncover data and to question your marketing efforts. Your time will be well spent. Market research How? There are two kinds of market research: primary and secondary. Secondary research means using published information such as industry profiles, trade journals, newspapers, magazines, census data, and demographic profiles. This type of information is available in public libraries, industry associations, chambers of merce, from vendors who sell to your industry, and from government agencies. Start with your local library. Most librarians are pleased to guide you through their business data collection. You will be amazed at what is there. There are more online sources than you could possibly use. Your chamber of merce has good information on the local area. Trade associations and trade publications often have excellent industryspecific data. Primary research means gathering your own data. For example, you could do your own traffic count at a proposed location, use the yellow pages to identify petitors, and do surveys or focusgroup interviews to learn about consumer preferences. Professional market research can be very costly, but there are many books that show small business owners how to do effective research themselves. In your marketing plan, be as specific as possible。 those are its features. Its benefits include pride of ownership, financial security, providing for the family, and inclusion in a neighborhood. You build features into your product so that you can sell the benefits. What aftersale services will you give? Some examples are delivery, warranty, service contracts, support, followup, and refund policy. Customers Identify your targeted customers, their characteristics, and their geographic locations, otherwise known as their demographics. The description will be pletely different depending on whether you plan to sell to other businesses or directly to consumers. If you sell a consumer product, but sell it through a channel of distributors, wholesalers, and retailers, you must carefully analyze both the end consumer and the middleman businesses to which you sell. You may have more than one customer group. Identify the most important groups. Then, for each customer group, construct what is called a demographic profile: ? Age ? Gender ? Location Page 10 of 31 ? Ine level ? Social class and occupation ? Education ? Other (specific to your industry) ? Other (specific to your industry) For business customers, the demographic factors might be: ? Industry (or portion of an industry) ? Location ? Size of firm ? Quality, technology, and price preferences ? Other (specific to your industry) ? Other (specific to your industry) Competition What products and panies will pete with you? List your major petitors: (Names and addresses) Will they pete with you across the board, or just for certain products, certain customers, or in certain locations? Will you have important indirect petitors? (For example, video rental stores pete with theaters, although they are different types of businesses.) How will your products or services pare with the petition? Use the Competitive Analysis table below to pare your pany with your two most important petitors. In the first column are key petitive factors. Since these vary from one industry to another, you may want to customize the list of facto