Our customer is a multi-utility company providing water, natural gas, electricity, energy and environmental services to several million clients.

Following a large merger with other neighbor companies, the new group of companies owns and operates several laboratories specialized in environmental analysis, spread over the served territories, whose overall capacity is in excess with respect to the internal demand.

The customer is therefore looking forward to selling analytic services to the market, on top of the activities carried out for the group. To this aim it needs to thoroughly analyse the market size, the competition and the services rendered by other laboratories.

The market has been sampled as follows.

Offer: a sample of some 400 chemical laboratories (excluding laboratories dealing with electrical, mechanical, IT, plastic and civil materials).

Almost all the laboratories have been approached and interviewed, obtaining 190 responses covering the required information (year of foundation, no. of employees, number and type of analyses carried out per year, sample collection method, etc.).

Demand: a primary sample of some 200,000 companies has been analysed, out of which the agricultural and industrial companies operating in the area of concern have been extracted.

Interviews have been carried out with a significant sample of companies in order to assess the number and type or required analysis, the availability of an internal lab, the use of external laboratories, the cost of such analyses.

The sample has been extended until the responses have become consistent in all the demand side segments.