Balvarez2's List: Consumer Research

Mintel covers industries from a consumer perspective. Beauty and Personal Care, Retail, Automotive, Travel, Food & Drink are a few of the sectors they include. Demographic categories include Women, Affluent Consumers, Baby Boomers, Mothers, Teens and Singles. They also have a variety of consumer focused theme reports on topics like Austerity & Value, Ingredients, Ethical & Green and Packaging. Focus is on the US and UK marketplace

eMarketer contains lots of demographic data related to consumers and their use of the internet. From how much time various demographics groups spend online to how much they spend on various products via online purchases, eMarketer is a great resource--their website provides some useful bits of "free" data through their newsletter and some articles.

Because it has such a global scope, GMID was mentioned in the International module as well. GMID covers over 200 countries and products sold there and industries. Market share data for numerous products is covered and quick top level economic data can also be pulled to compare trends across countries and time.

SimplyMap is a web-based mapping application that allows you to create thematic maps and reports using demographic, business and marketing data. Data can be downloaded for use with other software such as Excel and GIS. Data sources include some of the names noted elsewhere on this list, including Simmons and Nielson and MRI--you can't necessarily cross-tabulate some of the data and manipulate it the same way you can with the individual products, but it's still a useful tool.

Like SimplyMap, Demographics Now is a web-based mapping application that allows you to create maps and reports based on various demographic, geographic and consumer spending criteria. Gale Cengage has recently updated to streamline it and has added content.

For public and academic libraries, respectively, BusinessDecision and BusinessDecision Academic are reporting and mapping databases that combine extensive consumer household, market segmentation, and demographic data with GIS mapping technology.

Based on a broad survey, Simmons' OneView product provides consumer buying and shopping data on over 8,000 brands in 460 product categories. Libraries can usually only access survey data that is three years old or older, but the strength of Simmons is that you can cross-tabulate your results to see data such as who drinks Folgers Coffee and where do these people shop the most. Or what kinds of brands within a certain product category are most popular. This is a database that will most likely only be found in an academic or corporate setting.

Warc was formerly known as World Advertising Research Center and includes transcripts and reports from advertising conferences, best practice papers and other articles as well as advertising spending data.

The NPD Group bills themselves as the "global leader in sales and marketing information." Click on their "Industries" tab to see the various areas of retail they cover. This is a data source you'll often see referred to in specialty trade and industry journals and often you can hit the jackpot by stumbling across some bit of data from them that has been published in an article

Nielsen bills themselves as the "world's leading marketing information company." You may have heard of Nielsen families and television ratings...there are also Nielsen families who track all of their purchases with a scanner, which Nielsen then packages into marketing data.

Ad$spender is one of the few products that tracks advertising spending by both brand and outlet. At one time, print volumes of aggregate data were available for library purchase, although I think this is only available online now. Most likely not going to be found in a public library or smaller academic libraries due to its pricetag, but worth knowing about.

NRF publishes "STORES" magazine, which has a special issue every year listing the top 250 retailers in the world, ranked by revenues. This report and more is available on NRF

The American Customer Satisfaction Index. The national independent index of customer satisfaction.

Consumer Market Research - Global Market Research and Business Solutions – Consumer Trends and Analysis.

Click on their "Industry Expertise" tab to see the various area of retail they cover. This is a data source you'll often see referred to in specialty trade and industry journals.

also springwise.com

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