Typically, a general characteristic of a particular market sector prevents to give the answer to the question: in which direction to develop its contact men further and what tactics to select for increasing the income of their own business. But the way out is. With the help of the original analytical tool the degree of the attractiveness of the three allied industries – the snacks, the cookies and the crackers can be determined.

In the January issue of the magazine “Food Promotion. Prod & Prod” in the article “A special approach” a comparative market analysis of the market of the crisp foods of the grain’s processing is described.

The analysis always construes a choice of the alternatives, for example, whether to develop in this market further or leave it, in which direction to grow, whether to diversify a business or to focus on one market segment only? However, the market studies are often purely descriptive and do not allow to view the attractiveness of the market.

To illustrate the approaches to the analysis of the alternatives variants for a company’s development the editorial staff offers to compare markets of the snacks, the cookies and the crackers, which are near by to the consumption’s situation. These products are very similar: they can be as the product for breakfast or as a product for snacking between eating. These products consist of the products of the grain’s processing and have the identical sales channels to a large extent.

Only the grain varieties’ products that are made-to-eat, such as: muesli, cereal-flakes and corn-flakes, extruded products (pads, rings, stars, balls, etc.) can be properly considered as the dry breakfast cereal.

The biscuits’ market includes all kinds of the cookies: sugar cookies, cookies-pork sandwich as well as all kinds of butter biscuit – flaky, shortcake, biscuit, and oatmeal cookie. The crackers and the ship's bread are the most homogeneous market, included the sweet and the sugarless crackers and ship's bread.

The editorial staff is comparing these markets from the point of view of their attractiveness to the already existing or the potential player.

The first criterion is of the markets’ attractiveness is the market volume and capacity. It is advisable to focus attention on the market volume, expressed in monetary terms. The Russian cookies’ market expressed in physical terms as well as in monetary terms is unambiguously more attractive to investors than other examined markets: 562 thousand of tons or 25 million of rubles correspondingly to 2010 year.

The comparison of the dry breakfast cereal’ market with the crackers’ market is already not so unambiguously, if the annual volume of the crackers’ market is 4 million of rubles only, than dry breakfast cereal’ market is 8 million of rubles almost.

The second criterion is the growth of the market. The growing and, what is the most importantly, the markets, which have the potential for the further advance, are more attractive for investment outlay because it is much easier to enter into he growing market and to increase sales volume.

The market segment of the Russian cookies is the most attractive from the point of sales. The dry breakfast cereal’ market is attractive from the point of view of the rate of growth. To make a comprehensive comparison of the markets, according to these key features of their attractiveness, allows a matrix “volume of the market – the market growth”, introduced in the article.

The third criterion is the level of competition and the barriers of the entrance to the market. The lower level of competition, the greater margin the market’s situation allows to extract and, therefore, the market attractiveness is higher. It is necessary to take into consideration the barriers of the entrance to the market from the point of view of the necessary investments’ volume in addition to the competitive environment, dictating the required level of the marketing expenses. Here much depends on the particular product, but upon average the barriers of the entrance to the biscuits’ market are lower than the market of the dry breakfast cereal or the crackers.

These are the main criteria of the attractiveness of the markets. To consider these criteria as a whole, help using of a cost-based approach to the analysis of strategic alternatives for the business development. It allows considering the market from the point of view of the current cost effectiveness of the investment capital and the market’s growth in monetary terms. The essence of the methodologies of the cost estimate is described in the article “A Special Approach”, printed in the magazine “Food Promotion. Prod & Prod”.