Alice Wood is concerned. She has worked in a women s clothing store for several years and is now considering opening a store of her own. Her investigations have yielded considerable secondary information, but she is not sure how to go about estimating the potential for another women s clothing store in Prince George, British Columbia. Prince George is a city of 86,100 surrounded by a large trading area. It currently has 17 clothing stores and five department stores that retail women s clothing. During the past few years, Alice has been saving her money and learning all she could so that her Petite Shop women s wear store will be a success. In anticipation of starting her own store, Alice enrolled in a small business management course at a local college. The instructor stressed the importance of market research and mentioned several sources of secondary information that could assist in determining market potential for a new business. Alice obtained the reports she felt were relevant to her prospective business from the Provincial Department of Small Business, Statistics Canada, and the city hall in Prince George. This information is presented in Tables 1 and 2. TABLE 1 Population Number of families Per capita income Retail sales Per family expenditure on women s clothing Selected Data for the City of Prince George TABLE 2 Food stores Apparel stores: Sources: Financial Post Canadian Markets and Urban Family Expenditure Report and Market Research Handbook, 2009, Statistics Canada. Estimated Retail Space for Selected Retail Establishments (in square feet) City of Prince George 86,100 29,200 15,000 $737,700,000 Men s clothing stores Women s clothing stores Hardware stores Department stores $ 1,000 1,200,000 145,000 180,000 600,000 1,650,000 Now that Alice has this information, however, she is not sure how to proceed. She does not want to retail all kinds of ladies clothing, but plans to cater to the petite woman who wears dress sizes 3 to 9. Alice herself is petite (at 5 feet or 1.5 metres tall), and she feels she understands the difficulties women of her size have in shopping for clothing. From her retailing experience, she estimates that about 60 percent of all clothing sales are in women s clothing, and 20 percent of all women fit in the size 3 to 9 category. She arrived at her decision to select a store directed at the petite woman after she visited all 17 clothing stores in Prince George and the clothing departments of the city s five department stores. She estimates that only about 10 percent of clothing stores stock is sized 3 to 9, and the five department stores devote only about 6500 square feet of selling space to this size range. She believes a small shop of about 1000 square feet could provide a much better selection to this market than those outlets presently provide. Questions 1. Using the information provided, prepare an estimate of the market potential for the target market at which Alice Wood is aiming. 2. What portion of this market potential could Alice expect for Petite Shop s market share? 3. What nonquantitative considerations should be brought into this analysis?