Your market study is wrong without these three field checks
📌 In short: Part IV of the template imposed by Annex V to Executive Decree no. 26-154 requires an analysis of demand, of supply and competition, of sector trends, of positioning and of market access. Nothing specifies how to establish these — and that is where most studies slide into the declarative. Three field checks, doable in a few days and with no budget, are enough to anchor a study in reality: counting, price testing and verifying channel access.
Keywords in this article
1. What Part IV actually requires
The template in Annex V to Executive Decree no. 26-154 of 14 April 2026 devotes its fourth part to market research. It contains five named headings:
| Required heading | What it asks you to demonstrate |
|---|---|
| Analysis of demand (national, regional and international) | That the need exists, and at what scale |
| Analysis of supply / competition | Who already meets that need, and how |
| Sector trends | Which way the market is moving |
| Strategic positioning of the project relative to the market | Why this project rather than an existing competitor |
| Commercial policy and market access | How the product will actually reach the buyer |
The text lists these headings but prescribes no method. That is normal — it is not its role. But the effect is consistent: with no method imposed, a market study can be formally complete and entirely unverifiable.
📌 The test that separates the two. Take any figure in your market study and ask: where does it come from, and how could a third party find it again? If the answer is "from an estimate", the heading is declarative. If it is "from a count, a survey reading or a dated interview", it is verifiable. The rest of the work consists of moving headings from the first group to the second.
2. Why secondary data is not enough here
In many sectors, market research begins and ends with desk research: sector reports, public statistics, press articles. That step is useful — it provides the frame. It is not enough to answer the five headings, for three distinct reasons.
- The level of aggregation. National data describes a country; a project is set up in one wilaya, often within a catchment area of a few dozen kilometres. The gap between the two can be an order of magnitude.
- The time lag. Published data describes a period already past. In a fast-moving market, it describes the state of things before the decision you care about.
- The informal sector. Part of the activity escapes statistics by construction. In some segments it is the main competitor — and it is invisible in any documentary source.
None of these three limits is fixed by finding a better source. They are fixed by going out and measuring yourself, over a narrow perimeter, what secondary data cannot tell you.
🔎 Field observation (our engagements, not a regulatory text). In the studies we are asked to rework, the "demand analysis" section is almost always the longest and the weakest: plenty of national figures, no data specific to the project's perimeter. Three days of fieldwork produce a Part IV that is shorter and immeasurably more defensible.
3. Check 1 — Counting within the catchment area
This is the simplest, the cheapest, and the one that most often changes a study's conclusion. It consists of counting, across the project's real perimeter, what statistics aggregate.
Define the area before counting
A catchment area is defined in travel time, not kilometres. The perimeter used must be written into the study: without it, no count can be interpreted.
List the existing supply, one by one
Number of outlets or producers, their apparent size, their range, their opening hours. The survey is done on the ground and cross-checked against available public registers.
Measure a flow, not just a stock
Counting competitors tells you who is there. Counting footfall or transactions over identified time slots tells you whether the market is active. Two readings at contrasting moments beat one long continuous observation.
Counting feeds two headings of the template directly: the analysis of supply and competition, and strategic positioning — since you can only position yourself relative to supply you have actually observed.
4. Check 2 — Testing real prices
Price is the variable that connects the market study to the rest of the file: it determines projected revenue, hence the break-even point, hence the NPV. A pricing error propagates through the entire financial section.
Yet the price stated in most studies is a desired price, derived from cost plus a target margin. That is reasoning backwards: the market does not validate a margin, it validates a price.
Three readings, three different questions
| Reading | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| Prices displayed by the competitors identified in the count | What range is actually charged in the area? |
| Prices actually paid, discounts included | What is the gap between displayed and collected price? |
| Entry price of the segment above and the segment below | How far can you move before changing market? |
The second reading is the most often omitted and the most important: in sectors where discounting is systematic, the displayed price has no forecasting value. Building revenue on displayed prices overstates every line of Part VI.
⚠️ The link to profitability. A 10% error on selling price does not move profit by 10%: it moves it by the whole of the corresponding unit margin. On a project with a 5% net margin, overstating price by 10% is enough to turn a positive NPV negative. We set out this mechanism in our article on calculating NPV and IRR.
5. Check 3 — Real access to the channel
This is the most neglected check, and the one whose absence kills most projects after launch. The template's fifth heading — "commercial policy and market access" — does not ask for a commercial intention: it asks you to demonstrate that the product will reach the buyer.
A market can exist, be growing, and remain inaccessible. The most frequent obstacles are not demand-side:
- The channel is closed. Distributors in the area work on an exclusive basis, or with long-established players. Getting in means buying a slot, not merely offering a better product.
- Listing has an entry cost. Imposed payment terms, minimum volumes, contributions to promotional campaigns: all of these belong to working capital, not to market research — but they are discovered here.
- The end customer is not the decision-maker. In many segments the purchase decision belongs to a prescriber. A study that surveys the user without surveying the prescriber measures the wrong demand.
The method: three targeted interviews
This check does not require a survey. It requires three interviews: a distributor in the area, an indirect competitor, and a customer representative of the target segment. Three one-hour conversations reveal the structure of the channel better than a hundred questionnaires — because they deal with lived facts rather than stated intentions.
💡 What these interviews produce for the file. They give you the payment terms actually applied — hence the customer credit period to use in the working capital calculation described in our article on cash flow and working capital. A well-run market study feeds the financial section directly; that is how you can tell it was actually done.
Would your market study survive a review?
We run the field checks across your area, record the prices actually charged, and carry the findings through to the technical and financial parts of the study.
Have my market verified →6. Carrying the fieldwork through the rest of the study
A market study is only worth something if its conclusions travel into the other parts of the file. Here is where each check must appear.
| Check | Feeds | Part of the template |
|---|---|---|
| Supply count | Target market share, positioning | IV — market study |
| Flow count | Planned annual volume, utilisation rate | III — technical study |
| Price testing | Projected revenue, margin rate | VI — financial projections |
| Channel payment terms | Working capital requirement | V — investment plan |
| Listing lead time | Ramp-up schedule | VIII — implementation schedule |
This table doubles as a review grid: if a check appears nowhere other than in Part IV, it has not been exploited. And if Part VI was built without Part IV feeding it, the two parts describe two different projects — an inconsistency we cover in our article on the techno-economic study template.
Five signs of an unverified market study
- No dates, no locations, no number of observations mentioned.
- A market share expressed as a percentage of a national total.
- A selling price equal to cost plus a round margin.
- Competitors described by category, never named or located.
- A commercial policy written in the future tense, with no interlocutor cited.
This article presents a working method and constitutes neither legal advice, nor investment advice, nor a guarantee of commercial results. The content requirements cited are those of the template in Annex V to Executive Decree no. 26-154, to be verified with AAPI before filing.
FAQ — Frequently asked questions
🔎 Sources and references
- Executive Decree no. 26-154 of 14 April 2026 amending and supplementing Executive Decree no. 23-487 of 28 December 2023 — Annex V, techno-economic study template, Part IV "Market study" and Part VI "Economic and financial projections" — Official Gazette of the Algerian Republic no. 31 of 28 April 2026 · Verified on 01/08/2026
- Law no. 22-18 of 24 July 2022 on investment — Official Gazette of the Algerian Republic · Verified on 01/08/2026
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