Market Research: Market Analysis
Market Analysis
To understand the market for your product you need information on potential customers. This could be market research reports from professional vendors, consumer demographics and lifestyles, business to business markets, and institutional markets such as governments.
Reference Books
New Strategist publications--This publisher specializes in customer demographics. It produces the Who’s Buying series, generational reports (Boomers, General X, etc.), as well as, ethnic buying. Search for publications by using New Strategist as the author or ask one of the BIC staff.
Market Share Reporter BIC REF HF5401 .M35--Annual publicans that tracks and cites articles that cover product and company market share. Each citation gives basic statistics mentioned in the article and a full citation for the article so you can find it. Each year is a bit different.
MSA Profile BIC REF HC106.8 .M77--Gives regional, as well as city, data. Includes information on population, households, income, retail sales, labor, and data on broad industry groups.
MPA (Market Profile Analysis) BIC REF HC108 .H8 .M6--Information on Houston and surrounding areas broken down by Zip Code. Includes information on population, as well as industry, data.
Consumer Demographics & Life Styles
- American Community Survey This link opens in a new windowReplaces Census long form with annual updates and multi-year estimates of the characteristics of the population and housing. Find single years estimates for places containing 65,000 or more; 3 year estimates for places containing 20,000 or more; and 5 year estimates at the neighborhood level.
- Euromonitor Passport Reference and GMID This link opens in a new windowEuromonitor Passport Reference and GMID is a unique online database of international country statistics. Includes over 1 million demographic, economic and marketing indicators covering more than 200 countries.
- FAITS: Faulkner Advisory for IT Studies This link opens in a new windowFaulkner's tracks the events and trends that are shaping and redefining the computer and communications marketplace. Faulkner reports, and primary research studies help users understand the implications surrounding the frequent shifts in the rapidly-converging world of computing, data networking, and telecommunications.
- Statistical Insight This link opens in a new windowProvides data from thousands of publications and organizations for datasets on demographics, health, income, expenditures, prices, retail trade, etc.
- Social Explorer This link opens in a new windowProvides access to current and historical census data and demographic information with the ability to create thematic and interactive maps and reports.
Note: Users who want to bypass the option to create their own account can click on the Maps&Tables link to access the Social Explorer database. - Statistical Abstract of the U.S. (Current & Archive Editions) This link opens in a new windowProvides statistics collected by the U.S. government and organizations on all aspects of American life.
- American Customer Satisfaction Survey IndexMeasures the satisfaction of U.S. household consumers with the quality of products and services offered by both foreign and domestic firms with significant share in the U.S. markets. The survey benchmarks customer satisfaction with more than 230 companies in 43 industries and 10 economic sectors, as well as, over 100 services, programs and websites of federal government agencies.
- BLS Consumer Expenditure SurveyProvides information on the buying habits of American consumers, including data on their expenditures, income, and consumer unit (families/single) characteristics.
- Global Consumption Database World BankOne stop source of data on household consumption patterns in developing countries. It is designed to serve a wide range of users—from researchers to businesses. Data is based on national household surveys, which collect information for a group of household representative of the entire country. For each of the countries covered the resulting datasets have been used to calculate the share of the population at different levels of consumption.
New Strategist publications--This publisher specializes in customer demographics. It produces Who’s Buying series, generational (Boomers, Gen X etc.) reports as well as ethnic buying. Search for publications by using New Strategist as the author or ask one of the BIC staff.
Business to Business
- Bizminer This link opens in a new windowOffers industry financial analysis benchmarks for over 5,000 lines of business and industry market trends on thousands more. Their market analysis reports are available at the national and local levels down to the zip code.
Types of reports: Industry Financial Profiles, U.S. & Local Market Research Reports, Area Demographic Profiles, Sole Proprietor/Startup Profit & Loss and Local Market Vitality Profile. - Data Axle (formerly Reference Solutions and Reference USA) This link opens in a new windowUse Custom search to find suppliers or customers (public and private companies).
- Mergent Online This link opens in a new windowUse to find suppliers or customers (public companies only).
- ThomasNetUse to find suppliers or customers (public and private companies). Also some company records include catalogs.
- FedBizOppsRequests for products and services the U.S. government would like to purchase. Includes listings of recently awarded contracts.
- National Association of State Procurement OfficialsInformation about how U.S. states obtain products and services.