The Development of Business Plan for a Small Company for Entering a New Market

The purpose of this work is to conduct a market research of office supplies and develop a marketing plan for a small business company when entering a new territorial market in St. Petersburg. Using the analysis of secondary data and documents, structural analysis of the market the following tasks have been solved in this work: the specifics of the market research of small businesses and the problems that may be encountered when entering the new market have been revealed. A marketing research of the school and office supplies market in St. Petersburg was carried out, potential competitors were identified. The market for stationery is considered to be huge, but it is estimated as saturated by a lot of small specialized stores, and it is important for new players on the market to point out the uniqueness and benefit for the consumer, to find a new niche. The company’s business idea – a new format of a hypermarket in the market of office supplies – will attract the consumer with a wide range of different goods in one place and an obvious saving of time for purchases. The basis of the methodology is presented by fundamental work in the field of marketing and business planning, articles on methods of market research and specificity of the office supply market. The practical contribution of this work is the development of a competent marketing strategy of the particular company for attracting and retaining the target audience.