6A – Identifying Opportunities in Economic & Regulatory Trends

1) Customer Needs Analysis Elevates Sales and Productivity for a Food Industry Client - Infiniti Research's Latest Success Story
a) https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190228005765/en/Customer-Analysis-Elevates-Sales-Productivity-Food-Industry
b) This article states how competitive the fast food industry is and how the unmet customer needs are extremely important.
c) The customer in this situation is the people who eat at fast food restaurants
d) The opportunity in this article is stating how certain fast food industries need to meet customer needs in order to grow and beat their competition. The opportunity itself is easy to accomplish, but the customer need needs to be specified for each restaurant.

Considering I found this article about the opportunity, it is safe to say that it does exist and that I did not make it up, however, one could believe that the opportunity does not exist and fast food restaurants are doing good on their own without needing to keep changing their services for customers so rapidly. I believe that the unmet needs of customers are always opportunities and places that offer services, such as fast food restaurants, should constantly change in order to meet the needs of a growing economy and population.

2) Like Apple, these firms satisfy unmet need: Cramer
a) https://www.cnbc.com/2014/09/10/like-apple-these-firms-satisfy-unmet-need-cramer.html
b) Opportunity in this location reveals that some customers do not prefer to take out their credit card every time they pay for something, so Apple took this opportunity to create Apple Pay.
c) The customer in this situation is anyone with a credit card.
d) The opportunity is relatively hard for someone with no prior experience or funds to pull it off, however, Apple is a very large company with the resources to meet the need of it's customers.

I do believe that this need is unmet (now met) because I, myself, have hated taking out my card every time I pay for something and pulling out my phone to pay is so simple, especially since most everyone has a phone. People who do not have phones or who do not care about taking out their cards may not see this as an opportunity, but Apple must have seen enough complaints to label it as an opportunity themselves.

3) The Future of Data Privacy in the United States
a) https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-protection/the-future-of-data-privacy-in-the-united-states/
b) New regulations regarding internet and data privacy are currently being passed in the United States, like CCPA. The opportunity here is taking what most people value (privacy) and allowing them to keep their privacy as technology develops exponentially.
c) The customer is all Americans who have access to the Internet and data.
d) The opportunity is going to be hard to take advantage of, considering that technology is growing so fast and laws take time to pass. So, if the government takes privacy extremely seriously, they should try to keep up with the protection of it's citizens.

I believe that this opportunity is extremely important, and if someone were to think that it is not an opportunity, it would be because they do not value privacy. Everyone values their privacy to a certain extent, as do I, so I believe that this opportunity is very important and should meet the needs of its customers.

4) Here's a better way to do compliance and risk management
a) https://techbeacon.com/security/heres-better-way-do-compliance-risk-management
b) Constant laws and regulations are being put into place dealing with ethical and business issues that some companies cannot keep up with all of the regulations, which makes them extremely vulnerable to getting in legal trouble because of their lack of knowledge of regulations.
c) The customer is any company that has regulations
d) The opportunity here is that companies should be more knowledgeable about the regulations of their company and the federal regulations, but some may not be able to keep up with all of them. It may be hard to implicate a strategy to help these companies better prepare for rules and regulations, but I believe that reaching out and collecting sources that will give them the information they need will keep them out of financial and legal trouble.

Some may believe that companies should already be knowledgeable about the rules and regulations of their own company, but there are a lot of federal regulations that are passed every year, so there must be a way to make it easier for large companies to enforce the regulations rather than get in trouble for not knowing they even exist.