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Market Research: Start

This guide

will help you investigate your market, your competition, and your business environment through reports, periodicals, data collections, and on the web.

Consumer Spending

Surveys

Books on Consumers, Doing Research

Use the library catalog to find these.  In the search box, change "Any Field" to "Subject" and type in:

  • marketing
  • consumer behavior
  • advertising

Example:

Harvard Business Review

Demographics and Characteristics of Consumer Markets

Industry Overviews

Find market size, industry leaders, statistics, current status, future trends, histories and profiles of the industries here. If you look up the NAICS codes for your industry first, this will be a bit easier.

Market share

News Sources & Trade Journals

Often the best reports on industries, such as an annual review, appear in their trade journals - found in these databases. Use search terms such as “market,” “forecast,” “trends,” “industry overview,” etc. along with your own market identifier, i.e. “organic food."

Latest Tips on Marketing from Google

Shopping is changing fast, and Google knows what your customers search for and how they behave: Think With Google

Competition/BTB Company Listings

Major competitors are covered in "Industry overviews" section above. For more complete listings of companies in an industry see: