Conducting DESTEP analysis for your thesis

The DESTEP analysis is designed to identify developments in the market. This way, you get a clear picture of possible opportunities for and threats to your client. This includes looking at economic, demographic, technological and socio-cultural developments that play a role. How do you conduct a DESTEP analysis for your thesis? You can read about it here.

With DESTEP analysis, you make an external analysis. You do not focus on what is happening within a company, but instead on what is going on in the market. Here, you can think of all kinds of factors that come into play.

See below examples of factors that may be important in DESTEP analysis:

• Demographic factors (including population growth, ageing, and changing trends in income or unemployment);
• Economic factors (including purchasing power developments, economic growth or contraction, interest rate developments, and inflation rates);
• Socio-cultural factors (including changing lifestyles, tensions between groups, gender developments, leisure activities and new norms and values);
• Technological factors (including technological capabilities, increasing automation, new tools/apps, and the amount of data available);
• Ecological factors (including temperature increases, resource scarcity, sustainability requirements, weather conditions, and level of emissions);
• Political-legal factors (including legislation, available subsidies, taxes, and imposed restrictions).

The factors that are relevant to your analysis depends on the company or organisation you are writing your thesis for.

You can translate the results of the DESTEP analysis into a SWOT analysis.The external opportunities and threats generated by the DESTEP analysis go into a confrontation matrix.

Keep in mind that external developments are difficult to influence. However, a client may be able to respond to them (in the case of opportunities) or defend against them (in the case of threats).

Are you going to do a DESTEP analysis for your thesis? If so, you will probably place it in your theoretical framework and/or results chapter. You can use the analysis to outline the current situation and arrive at a problem statement or research question.

In addition, you can use the DESTEP analysis for your analysis (which you describe in the results chapter). From this, potentially important points of interest for the client roll-out, which you then talk about in the recommendations or the discussion.

To conduct a DESTEP analysis, you use external data. Think of CBS reports, research reports or data from databases (such as the Kadaster).

All these models may overwhelm you when you start working on your thesis. The SWOT analysis, DESTEP analysis and Maslow's Pyramid are just a few examples. Check out our overview article on models. It explains all different kinds of models you can use for your thesis.

While you're at it, also be sure to check out our thesis tips. They will help you get off to a good start.