So what is a Niche Market?

I'm currently in the process of writing an ebook on the topic of niche market discovery, but like everything its taken a lot longer than expected to complete. I am planning to post some snippets from it over the coming days in an attempt to get the creative juices flowing...

So lets start by defining a niche market, according to Wikipedia:

"A niche market is a focused targetable portion (subset) of a market sector." wikipedia.org

Before we can fully understand what a niche market is we first need to understand the difference between a niche and a market. A niche is a group of people that do stuff and share a general interest, these people can be hobbyists or just passionate about something. They are not necessarily buyers. A market, on the other hand, is a group of people who need or want stuff and usually share similar traits and have common needs, these people are looking to solve some sort of problem. A niche and a market are NOT the same thing.

Therefore, "a niche market simply means a smaller subset of a large market. By combining a market with a niche we hope to find a market that is not being addressed by the big players. The ideal niche market is one where there is an interest from a small but sizable group of individuals (niche market) and no one is fulfilling their needs." Mike Mindel, webventurer.com

Throughout this guide we will use examples where possible to better describe the process of niche market discovery. The niche I have decided to use is "golfing", and the related market would be "people who play golf", "people looking to buy golf clubs or equipment", "people looking to take a golfing holiday" etc.

Stay tuned for the first chapter: Unleash your brain