6A – Identifying Opportunities in Economic & Regulatory Trends

My first economic opportunity is about keeping franchise restaurants open past conventional hours in college towns where students are more likely to stay out and eat late. I found this idea from witnessing college students eating trends. College students are much more likely to eat food later than the normal adult. The prototypical customer would be college students in towns such as Gainesville, Tallahassee, and any other large school party school in the United States. I believe that the opportunity would be relatively easy to exploit, as all the franchise managers would need to do is calculate the cost to employ people verses the potential profit margin. If the calculations come out profitable, it would be easy to exploit this opportunity.

One regulatory opportunity would be to enforce stricter taxes on online purchases for websites such as Amazon.com. Currently there is no sales tax per state when ordering items online. If a sales tax was instituted based on where the item was ordered from, the state government would bring in more revenue. I believe that this opportunity exists because there is currently little to no regulation on online orders. The prototypical customer is anyone who spends a lot of money online, which is actually a growing majority of the population. This opportunity would be easy to exploit because all that needs to happen is the state or national government to pass a bill enforcing taxes for online purchases.

My second economic opportunity would be real-estate investments in growing college towns. For example, my city of Gainesville is consistently growing, as the city just built a new massive apartment complex called The Standard. I found this opportunity based on the growth of my city that I have witnessed in the past two years. This makes me realize that there is a large market for students who are also looking to rent houses in the Gainesville area. If someone was to become a landlord for multiple houses in a large growing college town, they would make a steady revenue stream from rent. The prototypical customer would be college students looking to rent houses so that they can attend their school.

Another regulatory opportunity would be a price ceiling on gasoline and necessities during times of crisis. Recently, Hurricane Irma hit Florida. I saw images of many stores and gas stations that were charging prices that were obnoxiously higher than normal prices, as stores realized that they could capitalize and increase prices during this time of crisis. A price ceiling on necessity items would allow people of lower income groups afford the goods that they need for survival during times of environmental crisis. The prototypical customer would be any human being in a zone of danger during a natural disaster.