Market forces analysis you can check

What a market forces analysis is

Markets move because of forces outside any one company: policy and regulation, the economy, technology, social change, the environment and the law. A market forces analysis names the specific forces at work in your market and judges how much each one matters and how soon. It is what you use when you have to say where a market is heading and opinion is not enough.

When it helps

You need one when someone asks where an industry is heading and you have to answer with more than a hunch. A founder or executive wants a fast read on the market. A strategy team is refreshing a three to five year plan. A corporate development team is scanning for risks or expansion moves. An investor is deciding which way a sector is going.

What you can do with it

A Dexil Market Forces report is built around the decisions you have to make:

• See what is changing before it shows up in the numbers, from forward signals and early signals to watch
• Know which forces to act on now: each is placed by how much it matters and how uncertain it is, so you can tell what to act on, what to plan scenarios for, what to monitor and what to prepare for
• Trace forces through their consequences: first, second and third order effects (below)
• Plan for more than one future, with scenarios and the wild cards that could upset them
• Brief a board or a client in a frame they know, with the forces grouped as political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal
• Add your company and the report also says what it should do about the forces
• Check the evidence: the report lists the sources it drew on

Follow forces to their consequences

The direct effect of a force is rarely what changes your plan. A Dexil report traces forces through three levels of consequence: direct effects (first order), what those cause in turn (second order) and what follows from that (third order). Where the evidence supports a chain, you see the chain rather than a list of trends, and that is what turns trend-watching into foresight you can plan against.

Do I need PESTEL or Five Forces first?

No. PESTEL organises the outside factors acting on a market into six categories, and Porter's Five Forces examines competition inside one industry. Both are useful frames for the question. A market forces analysis is the research that answers it: it finds the specific forces in your market, ranks them, shows how they interact and lists the sources it used. A Dexil report uses the PESTEL grouping, so the result drops straight into the frame you already use.