Publications and Links to Help with Market Research
This page contains a number of introductory articles and resources that will be of most assistance to those new to market research. However, many of these articles also address issues of interest to entrepreneurs who already have some research experience.
Getting Started
Fee-Based Market Intelligence Services
News
Government Documents and Searches
Books
Being a small business entrepreneur means being a market researcher
By Darlene Mann. An overview of market research techniques aimed at a small business audience.
From the Service Corps of Retired Executives Web page
Market Research—What Is It?
A collaborative project created by users of Smallbusiness.com.
Researching Your Market (PDF 90 KB) Download Adobe Reader
This publication by the U.S. Small Business Administration provides an overview of what market research is and how it's done. It introduces inexpensive techniques that small business owner-managers can apply to gather facts about their customers and the people they'd like to have for customers.
Market Evaluation from EntreWorld
The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation sponsors this site, "EntreWorld," with the mission of supporting entrepreneurs. This page is the best starting point on their site for understanding market research, competitive analysis, and demographics. However, the overall site provides quite a few other useful resources for entrepreneurs not related to market research.
Quirk's Marketing Research Review
Among the best resources on the Web, this publication publishes free and fee-based information oriented to market research professionals. However, the clarity of its writing makes it a useful first stopping point for non-professionals interested in conducting an assessment of their target markets. In addition to an excellent glossary, this site provides a directory of firms providing market research, a searchable database of market analyses, and an archive of past informative articles.
How to Prepare a Market Analysis
From Edward Low Peerspectives, an overview of data-oriented market analysis techniques, with a discussion of questionnaire design and a number of suggestions for navigating government data sources.
Preparing to get a Patent (Marketing after Patenting)
This article by Ronald J. Riley of the InventerEd website offers some basic advice for inventors preparing to enter the market after finishing the patenting process.
Marketability Evaluation
This National Inventor Fraud Center web page provides a list of organizations who meet the center's criteria for offering reputable marketability evaluations.
Market research terms glossaries
From Quirks.com and the Market Research Society, here are two guides to the most common market research terminology. Useful browsing before or after a conversation with a potential market research vendor.
Market Research
Maintained by Carter McNamara, PhD, the site provides good detail, exhaustive topics, and academic depth, making for a useful site for exploring market research as an overall discipline. However, quite a few of the links do not work.
Conducting Surveys and Focus Groups
An overview of cost-effective market research techniques, discussing strategies to start cheaply and expand your efforts and expense as needed.
Analyzing Your Market
A discussion of how market research leads to decisions about who your customers are, how to best segment them, and then communicate the benefits of your product to them.
Issues to Consider When Outsourcing Market Research
From Edward Lowe Peerspectives, a discussion of the issues involved in making the decision to hire outside market research help or conduct the research in-house.
The New Market Research
From Inc.com, an article discussing new low-cost, approaches to market research. This article is primarily of interest to entrepreneurs researching consumer product markets, but the discussion of weaknesses of traditional market research and possible lower-cost alternatives should be of use to anyone exploring a market segment.
Market Research Portal
Market Research Portal is a free use Web site run by a not-for-profit organization in the United Kingdom. MRP provides information on breaking market research-related news and upcoming events and maintains a news articles archive. The site also includes an advice section, book lists, FAQs, and links to other market research sites.
Researching your Market
From Entrepreneur.com, an overview of data collection methods, emphasizing primary research techniques. Includes discussions of focus groups, surveys, and in-depth interviewing.
Questionnaires and Survey Design
Very useful overview of the issues to consider when structuring a market research survey instrument. This page is a sample chapter from a book on market research statistical methods (which can also be purchased here).
Unearthing Market Research: Get Ready for a Bumpy Ride
A description of market research and data gathering techniques and challenges written from a consultant's perspective. Covers some of the material as the above introductory pieces but sheds some insight into how market analysts view the job of gathering and translating information about markets for their clients.
U.S. Small Business Administration market research page
Overview of market research techniques provided by the U.S. Small Business Administration. Useful in that it provides a fairly comprehensive introduction to market research techniques, though not in as much detail as other links here.
Fee-Based Market Intelligence Services
The World Wide Web contains a wealth of information, increasingly available free of charge. However, many organizations still invest heavily in gathering information, analyzing it, and then selling a finished report to clients. While expensive, these sources often provide the most accurate and detailed data available. Below are links to the main fee-for-service providers of news and analysis.
Dialog
Searchable databases of corporate and business information. Dialog's offerings focus on "business journal news and analysis, First Call consensus estimates, consumer marketing data, corporate chronologies and histories, press releases, and stock quotes." Small business or start-up entrepreneurs will probably find most value in Dialog's Web-based services, as much of the main offering is tailored for larger firms with intranets. A related Dialog service, Profound, assembles tailored packages of business reports on customer-specified topics.
Lexis-Nexis
Historically a search service for legal and public documents, Lexis-Nexis now also offers Web-based searches of many consumer and trade publications. This page details their current offerings. Lexis-Nexis is considered the premier database of its kind; however, small businesspeople typically find it prohibitively costly. Portions of Lexis-Nexis (typically the print news and legal documents) can often be accessed for free from university or some public libraries.
Centre for Analysis and Dissemination of Demonstrated Energy Technologies (CADDET)
Though a non-profit organization intended to gather and distribute information about energy-efficiency technologies, this organization does charge for much of its information. However, its case-study approach and news updates make its offerings slightly different than public-access information sites. For individuals from member states (the U.S. included), the fees are lower.
FIND/SVP
This company provides services that combine human management and strategic services with market assessment databases. Using a network of paid consultants and in-house research, FIND/SVP assembles custom market and strategic analyses for a fee.
MarketResearch.com
Essentially a massive portal to syndicated market research and analysis publications available from many sources, this site includes a section of energy and environment pages, as well as a page on general market research resources.
Marketsearch Direct
Structured categorically like a traditional Web directory, Marketsearch Direct refers users to various market assessments already in print. Only brief descriptions of the contents of each report are included, with contact information omitted. For a commission, the database will refer users to the publishing organization. These reports tend to be low-circulation, high-value analyses of various market niches sold to a few firms at a high price. While the publishers vary and the site does not rate quality, in the main, market analysis of this kind is quite detailed and accurate.
Factiva (formerly Dow Jones Interactive)
Jointly operated by Dow Jones and Reuters News Agency, "Factiva" is a moderately priced ($69 annual fee) custom news and corporate analysis service. However, much of what is offered is also available at no charge through other news and financial search engines. Factiva's primary selling point is the site organization and customizable search options.
Gale Group and Ingenta
Headquartered in Minnesota, the Gale Group is a large publishing and information-brokerage firm and provider of Ingenta, an academic journal database. In the main, academic publications will not be the most useful source of information for market researchers. However, time spent looking for journal articles can turn up some useful information. Ingenta charges for access, but some university libraries make it available at no cost.
Bizminer.com
Another portal site selling market analysis arranged by industry and region. Bizminer focuses on integrating various available data sources at a lower cost than others, typically less than $100 per report for three-year data series. Friendly design makes this one of the easier sites to navigate.
Emerging Markets Online
Yet another portal site arranging and selling syndicated market research and analysis, this site focuses on emerging markets. Most of these reports are quite costly, in the $1,000 ballpark.
NewsNow
Primarily a news portal site, NewsNow also offers a fee-based news alert service for businesses. Entrepreneurs can specify search terms and sources, and the site will automatically email updates on breaking news topics.
News
Current news reports are often the best place to get started with market research. Many of the leading print and television news organizations now make much of their archives available to Internet users free of charge. However, news Web pages usually search only online news sources, which excludes much information found only in print. A fee-service such as Lexis-Nexis that searches both print and online sources is a more thorough alternative.
Meta-Search Engines
Searching news sites can, in some cases, be tedious as there are many sources and most report on a broad range of topics. Typically, a meta-search engine - a single site programmed to search multiple other news sites - is the most efficient way to conduct searches.
Directories
After meta-search engines, directories are the second most useful sites. They differ from a meta-search in that they furnish links directly to news sites, arranged by various categories.
Top News Sites
Here are some of the more prominent national news organization's Web pages, most of which offer searchable archives. The New York Times charges for archival material.
Business News
- Journal of Commerce
Wall Street Journal
CNN Financial News
TheStreet.Com
Financial Journal
PRNewswire
Businesswire
Energy News
- RenewableEnergyWorld.com News
Solar Power news site
Source Guides Renewable Energy News
Sustainable Energy News
Government Documents and Searches
Other than economic and statistical data, the U.S. government maintains databases of information of possible use to market researchers. Most notable are the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office sites, which provide useful competitive information, now searchable online.
U.S. Energy Information Agency
U.S. Department of Energy portal site providing access to the data, analysis, and forecasts prepared by the Energy Information Agency. This page is the best place to start your search for energy data, an alphabetical listing of the site's offerings.
EDGAR
The Securities and Exchange Commission Web page provides a search utility called "EDGAR" for searching on all SEC filings. These filings, though dense and written in difficult to read financial jargon, provide an excellent source of information about various publicly traded U.S. and foreign companies operating in the U.S. The SEC requires various kinds of full disclosure about financial health and revenues. Among the best places for in-depth corporate research.
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) now offers a searchable archive of approved and pending patents, with full text and illustrations. The high volume of patent applications make this database seemingly impenetrable, but this remains a good place for initial investigation into competitive technologies.
Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy
A federally maintained database of state-level incentives for the use of alternative and renewable energy sources.
Books
The Web suffers from no shortage of market research advice or sources. The depth of the information sometimes lacks, however. The following books offer more depth on the discipline of market research.
The Market Research Toolbox: A Concise Guide for Beginners
Edward F. McQuarrie
An introduction to market research techniques for the beginning analyst, presenting the techniques and goals grouped by six basic methods. Includes discussion of newer, nontraditional market research and suggestions for integrating research into an overall strategy. Review available here.
Qualitative Market Research: A Comprehensive Guide
by Hy Mariampolski (Author)
Includes an overview of the history and philosophy behind qualitative research, the organization of qualitative research, and aspects of various research methods. Discusses project management, planning, and budgeting issues. Finally, covers group moderation, interviewing techniques, and data collection and analysis.
State of The Art Marketing Research
by George Edward Breen, Albert Breneman Blankenship, Alan F. Dutka
Topics addressed by this guide to marketing research include how to prepare research plans, how to select primary and secondary research methods, and how to make research-based strategy decisions.
Know Your Market: How to Do Low-Cost Market Research
by David B. Frigstad
Discussion of ways to conduct traditional market research using the lowest-cost possible methods.
The Marketing Research Project Manual
by Glen R. Jarboe
Case-study based guide to marketing research, emphasizing traditional survey-based analytic methods using a statistical package such as SPSS or Excel. Uses real-life examples to look at all stages of marketing research.
Marketing Research, 7th Edition
by David A. Aaker, V. Kumar, and George S. Day
Marketing research how-to book emphasizing the needs of product managers, including discussions of how to plan a market research strategy and evaluate the quality of outsourced research products.
The Internet-Plus Directory of Express Library Services: Research and Document Delivery for Hire
A publication of the American Library Association, this directory lists various research agencies and professionals available for hire.