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One of the most difficult aspects of researching a market is locating hard numbers such as finding market share figures, sales growth rates, sales margins, etc. Marketing professionals, academics and students alike face this difficult and often frustrating problem and are often at a loss in terms of what direction to take to find what they need.

In this tutorial we offer suggestions to aid those who find themselves in need of market information. This tutorial should prove useful for a wide range of marketing functions including the brand manager in charge of product decisions, artists looking for new markets for their work, salespeople prospecting for new business, students writing term papers, and many more. 

Sources of Market Information - Relatively Inexpensive

In this section of the tutorial we provide places to turn to for locating inexpensive market information. Information that is relatively inexpensive is generally easy to obtain (and is often free) but is frequently not as detailed as needed for many research situations. Additionally, as one might guess, there are not that many sources offering free information and when it can be found the depth of information is generally limited. For instance, you might locate bits and pieces of a research report but not the entire report.

Options presented include:

• Industry Trade Information
• Government Data
• Corporate Information
• Third-Party Sources
• Other Source

Trade Information

Trade Associations
Trade Associations exist in nearly every industry. These organizations are formed for many reasons, but mostly they are in business to help their members become more successful. One function performed by many trade associations is to conduct surveys and provide other industry metrics. Accessing this information may be as simple as visiting the trade association’s website, although some associations may limit access to members only, in which case joining the association (if they permit), including paying dues, may be the only way to gain access to the best stuff.

Finding trade associations for a particular industry or product can be a challenging task. In many cases the title of the association tells you who they represent, but this is not always true. Another problem is that certain industries may be represented by multiple trade associations.

Highlighted Sources:
AdviceAboutAnything Associations

Trade Show Sites
If you have problems finding a trade association then look to websites that are in the trade show business since where there is a trade show there is often a trade association sponsoring it.

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The Trade Show News Network  This site has been around for some time and has evolved to be mostly a search engine for the trade show industry including locating trade shows. Search filtering includes options to search by industry, state, country and more. Accessing detailed information though requires registration (free).

Tradeshow Week  This website for a trade show industry magazine offers several features including a good search option for locating shows and also for locating information on exhibit space.

Trade Magazines
Publications that cover industry news, such as trade magazines, may also offer good market information. While in some cases trade associations also produce their own trade magazines, the majority of publications providing industry news are distributed by commercial publishers. Most of these magazines are rarely available on news stands, so unless you are in the industry or you know someone who is, then it is unlikely you would have been exposed to many of these publications. Certainly an Internet search with industry name and the words “trade publication” could yield more results.

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NewsDirectory  Included in this large magazine directory are links to hundreds of business magazines and trade publications in several different categories.

Media Jumpstation  Easy-to-use search feature for locating mostly U.S. media including consumer and trade magazines, television and radio programs, and newspapers.

Government Information Sites
More relatively low cost sources of information can be found through government offices and agencies. Many national governments offer a full range of helpful materials including information on consumers, domestic businesses, and international markets. For the United States market, information available through the U.S. Government is staggering. The U.S. Government is a behemoth with agencies and offices found in more nook and crannies than one could ever imagine and the uninitiated can spend hours on end trying to find relevant information. We’ve listed a few sites, both U.S. and international where you can start your search.

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Economic Census  Released every five years, the information found in these reports from the U.S. Census Bureau provides an excellent glimpse at industrial activity including the Industry Series report that offers separate reports for many industries and shows the number of businesses within an industry, sales volume, number of employees, and more.

Export.gov - Country and Industry Market Research  This U.S. Government trade portal contains a list of links to country information including market studies, extensive product and industry reports, trade agreement information and many other resources.

National Technical Information Services  Offers a vast collection of purchasable U.S. Government publications produced by numerous agencies. Many reports include good information on both U.S. and international markets. Topics are wide ranging but the Advanced Search feature allows for category filtering.

STAT-USA  Some of the best government information can be found on this site operated by the U.S. Department of Commerce. While some reports are free most of the in-depth materials require a fee. One major source of information here is GLOBUS (Global Business Opportunities)/NTDB (National Trade Data Bank) which contains daily updated information on trade leads and international trade data and export promotion information including in-depth country reports that may help with locating market statistics.

Strategis  Canadian site that has many strong resources related to international trade including several good facts and statistics pages covering many industries. Also available is an outstanding feature called Trade Data Online that allow users to build country specific market reports and graphs showing imports and exports for Canada and the U.S. that can be examined by product category. Curiously, while the service is free on this site the same information from STAT-USA (see above) requires a fee.

Government Portals
If you are still having problems locating good government information you may want to check out sites that serve as portals to a wealth of government materials.

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Infomine  This is an incredibly extensive meta site put together by the libraries of University of California system. Its government section alone has a remarkable number of links (well over 4000) covering just about any topic for which a government has collected data.

University of Michigan Government Documents  Excellent resource that takes a while to navigate because it is so densely packed with information for both U.S. and international governments. For those doing market research a great part of the site is the Statistical Resources on the Web page that contains links to lots of valuable resources though some may only be accessible to university users.

Corporate Web Sites
If you are looking for information on a specific company, and if you are willing to believe what a company tells you in their own literature, then you may want to check out the company's website. While materials on many corporate websites are really only promotional pieces (i.e., trumpet their successes), there may be a few gold nuggets of information found amongst the hype. In particular, most publicly traded companies place their annual reports on their website. Annual reports to shareholders may allude to quantitative information regarding the markets in which they operate. For instance, these reports may mention the company’s market position within a particular product category.

For corporate websites that are dense packed with information, it may be more practical to search the site using an Internet search engine. Search engines generally offer more robust features than the search features available on the company’s site. To make things easier, use the search engine’s Advanced Search feature and limit searches to just the company’s website. In this way the only search results that are displayed will be those from the company’s site. However, be warned that not all information available on a company website is indexed in a search engine.

Since not all company websites have the same name as the company name locating a corporate website can be time consuming. Certainly if you know the company name using an Internet search engine will almost always get you the site web address. However, if you do not know the company name consider these options:

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Annual Report Service  If annual reports can’t be found on a corporation’s website then try this site. It offers links to thousands of annual reports in both HTML and PDF formats though to access requires a registration (free).

Hoover's Online  Provides profiles and other information on thousands of companies. Some information is free, including basic company profiles while more in-depth material requires a subscription.

Open Directory Project  The Open Directory Project consists of a loosely knit group of "editors" who volunteer their time to build what has amounted to the largest human-created, freely accessible website directory. For business research it holds great value for locating competitors within an industry since searching using a product or industry keyword often produces a list of categories containing the keyword. Clicking on a few categories may produce listings of potential product or service providers.

Press Releases
A good corporate press release is an interesting document; it is part promotion and part useful information. The most useful release for gathering numbers are those provided by market research firms, who are using the release to sell their research reports (which are often quite expensive). To entice purchasers, the release may reveal some of the market statistics that can be found if the entire report is purchased. There are several sources for tracking down press releases. First, companies that issue them often post the release to their own website. Second, press releases are generally distributed to media outlets via a third-party provider. Searching these sites may yield good data, however, most of these providers only retain the releases in their database for a month or two.

Highlighted Sources:
Business Wire  Leading provider of company released news and PR information. This site allows searching of the last 30 days of press releases, however, users must register (free) to see full text.

PR Newswire  A premier site for PR professionals and others involved in corporate communications. Contains several databases searchable by company, industry and more. Also includes a resource section for those involved in PR.

White Papers
White papers are generally detailed, sometimes highly researched, documents that are intended to offer a much fuller picture of the capabilities of a product or company. Unlike an advertisement or press release, white papers are normally not blatantly promotional (though certainly some are) but rather, through strong writing, and hopefully good research, attempt to establish a level of credibility for a company and its products or services. Since many white papers are grounded in research these often contain good market information, especially in terms of results of customer surveys, sales trends and industry forecasts.

Unfortunately many companies place all but the title and a brief abstract of their white papers behind a login (often free) and use these registrations to capture sales leads. Besides the obvious downside of having to give out personal information in order to access white papers located behind a login, these white papers are often not accessible to search engine indexing. Consequently, doing a keyword search in your favorite search engine for a white paper that addresses numbers for a specific market may yield few results when in fact some white papers do exist. The best solution is to search for white papers using a leading search engine but limit the search to industry or product keywords and not market statistics keywords. In this way the white paper’s title and possibly abstract, which are accessible to search engines, may offer clues to the content of the white paper, and of course, offer links to the site.

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Bitpipe  Primarily a reseller of technology-related syndicated research reports though it does offer access to a modest amount of free (though users must register) industry provided case studies and white papers.

Third-Party Sources

Magazines and Newspapers
Press release information and other methods for gaining publicity are important sources for journalists who seek ideas and information for upcoming articles. Additionally, as part of their research for articles journalists often gain access to expensive market research reports parts of which may be mentioned in an article. Thus, magazines and newspapers are a good starting point for locating market data.

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NewsDirectory  Mentioned above as a source for locating trade magazines, NewsDirectory also has a very large selection of links to business magazines.

FindArticles.com  A service of LookSmart, this site contains a large list of business publications including many industry and trade publications. Users can search thousands of published articles available from 1998 to present (though generally the most current stuff is a few months old). While access to many articles is free, accessing top business publications may require payment.

Video and Audio News Programming
Search engines are quickly evolving to allow for the search of content within video and audio programming. Several search tools make it easy to search video clips, such as news reports, university lectures, presentations on corporate websites, and much more.

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Blinkx  Currently in beta testing (and currently free!), this site allows for the searching of video clips and some audio, such as programming from major news, sports and entertainment providers. Also offers features for setting up folders that are automatically updated as clips meet user's search criteria. Access to some search results may require a fee.

Google Video Search  Google's attempt at video search is also a beta service but, unlike the other services listed, results of a search do not lead directly to the video. Instead Google provides information (obtained from closed captioning text) about a video clip and indicates when it might air next. Sources include local and national U.S. stations and networks.

Yahoo Video Search  While still in beta, Yahoo's video search scours the Internet (mostly websites of non-news sources) for video clips. Clips are available in several formats and the Advance Search provides many filtering options. Material found through this search option may prove very useful in educational situations and presentations.

Other Sources

Print and CD/DVD Reports
The Internet is a great source for locating most of the available low cost market information. However, there are still several sources that are not available over the web or are more accessible in other formats. Most of these are in print form, though a few may only be available through CD-ROM or DVD. In all the examples we provide the best place to access these is through large libraries such as those found at major universities.

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Euromonitor  Publishes in both print format and online many reports dealing with market intelligence in numerous industries. These publications including several global market share reports as well as studies of specific product markets. However, all reports are very expensive and most likely out of the reach of individuals. To find a report for individual use the best bet is to locate the name of the report at Euromonitor then enter a report's name in a search engine and filter search results to only search nearby universities.

Market Share Reporter  Published by Thompson Gale Publishing, this publication has been a mainstay in university libraries for years. Essentially it provides summaries, culled from many sources, of market share information for numerous product categories (though some information tends to be dated). The publication is expensive and for individuals is probably best viewed at a library. It is usually found within a library's reference section so it is unlikely that users will be able to check this report out of the library.

Statistical Reference Index  The SRI, also available mostly at large university libraries, examines major magazines and journals looking for mentions of statistical information. While its strength is not in market statistics (it is better identifying demographic information) there still information to be found especially under the Product Ratings area or even under listings for specific products.

TableBase  Another product of Thompson Gale, this reference publication presents industry, company, and product information in the form of tables. Covers more than 90 industries worldwide. Like similar reference products, access to this one is best obtained via a university library. (Not this link here is to a PDF file).

Expert Sites
Within the last few years several websites have been created that allow someone seeking information to post questions to supposed experts in a field. On an effectiveness scale these site probably do not rate very high for providing hard numbers. But these experts may still provide value in offering direction to someone who seeks information. It should be noted that these expert sites should not be confused with a “for-a-fee” research specialist which we will discuss in Part 2 of this tutorial.

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AllExperts  This free service that allows visitors to pose new questions to supposed experts in many different fields including some in specific industries. Can also search through the database for previously answered questions. This service tends to be more consumer-oriented (i.e., non-business questions) than other services.

Google Answers  This leading search engine offers an Ask an Expert feature (for a fee) that has those looking for answers posting questions and also posting the amount they are willing to pay for the answer. Before spending money, search to see if an answer is already available.