6A- Identifying Opportunities

Opportunity 1: With climate change, more natural disasters are occurring. I believe that there is an opportunity to create a widespread insurance segment related solely to the effects of climate change. I know we have flood insurance, home insurance, etc; however, we need an insurance from the unstoppable climate change pandemic. I found this information on thebalance.com in an article speaking about the top 6 economic trends happening today. I believe that this information presents the opportunity I listed above because I have grown up in the panhandle, experiencing the disastrous effects of Katrina and Michael. I believe the prototypical customer would be any homeowner on a fault line, major hurricane zone, tornado zone, or in mountainous regions- all people who are more likely to experience the effects of natural disasters. I believe that with changing times and changing mindsets, this opportunity would be fairly easy to exploit in about 10-20 years; contrarily, I believe this would be somewhat hard to market to consumers at this period of time due to many believing that a. climate change is not happening and b. natural disasters are not as prominent in the continental United States as they are in other areas of the world.

Opportunity 2: With the natural expansion and recession of the U.S economy, I think that there would be a large opportunity in a mobile app that tracks current expansionary and recessionary periods and compares them to past expansionary and recessionary periods. I did not necessarily find this information; I simply know the basis of the economy due to a few economics courses and living through the Great Recession as a child. I believe that the prototypical consumer would be anyone ranging 18-70 (college age to retirement). I Believe that this opportunity exists as many people are not as informed as they should be concerning the economy, especially people whose professions do not solely rely on the health of the economy. I believe this app would be fairly easy to exploit and market through mass media, social media, and the internet as a whole.

Opportunity 3: With the CCPA recently enacted in California, I think an opportunity exists in other states as well. I am taking a marketing class right now and we have touched some on the CCPA and how companies manage their employee’s and customer’s privacy. I think the enactment of other privacy acts throughout the remaining states would be a great opportunity to help citizens have an ease of mind when concerning who has their personal information and who can use it. I found some of my inspiration from an article written on paychex.com, a major U.S company. The prototypical customer would be all U.S adult citizens, as everyone has the right to privacy. I think this idea is great and many people would benefit from it; however, designing these new privacy acts and enacting them is a timely process, with a magnitude of legal processes, therefore this opportunity would be extremely difficult to exploit.

Opportunity 4: With the recent legalization in 11 states of recreational use of marijuana, I believe a large-scale opportunity exists. In recent studies done by Georgia State University, it was found that alcohol sales dropped by 20% in counties where marijuana was recreationally legalized. Also, states who have legalized the recreational use of marijuana have brought in hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues, with California bringing in $345 million in 2018. I have found this information from an informative article on marketwatch.com, a website I have become very familiar with in the past year. The prototypical customer would be state and federal governments if they were to pass the law of legalized recreational use of marijuana. I believe this opportunity exists as it has brought in so much tax revenue to legal states as well as aided in the decline of alcohol sales.