Research Guides: Business Research Toolkit: Market & Industry Research

Tips for Doing Market & Industry Research

This page will help you find secondary market and industry research. Secondary research is a type of research that has already been compiled, gathered, organized, and published by others. Secondary research sources include market research reports, industry reports, trade publications, and government research and data. These sources will aid with conducting industry, market, consumer, and competitor analyses.

Best database(s) for consumer analysis:
- Marketresearch.com
Best database(s) for consumer behavior data:
- Statista
Best database(s) for consumer demographic and geographic data:
- Social Explorer

Find Market, Industry, and Consumer Research Reports

IBISWorld This link opens in a new window Limited to 30 downloads per session. IBISWorld Industry Market Research reports covers about 680 U.S. industries written at the 5-digit level of NAICS. Each report contains key statistics, market characteristics, segmentation, industry conditions, performance and outlook. These reports are written by industry specialists. Each report is updated every 4 months.
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Industry drivers, operating conditions, and short-term risk
Industry competitors
Current and projected industry performance
Industry products and markets
Supply chain and trade information
Consumer behavior
Commodity prices

Statista This link opens in a new window Reports that provide an aggregate of a variety of data, mainly statistics. Search for data by industry, political issue, consumerism, companies or countries. The data reports provide sourcing information.
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Market overviews, competitors, revenues, and employment rates.
Industry trends, drivers, and forecasts
Top companies and products in major industries
Company overviews, rankings, and competitors
Company value and stock price
Consumer behavior

MarketResearch.com This link opens in a new window Full-text service of market research reports on many topics. Includes more than 40,000 market intelligence publications from 350 publishers worldwide.
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Freedonia Reports:

Emphasis on manufactured goods
Historical market size and industry output
Product and market segmentation
Market drivers, challenges, and key indicators
Five-year forecasts
Supply chain
Leading companies

Barnes Reports:

Focuses on manufacturing, retail, wholesale, and services industries and consumer buying trends.
Estimates on industry establishments and employment rate
Sales by product lines for retail industries
Cost of materials and capital expenditures
Wages and salaries
Investment opportunities

Mind Commerce:

Focuses on the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry
Industry and market overview and competitor analysis
Insights on emerging opportunities

Packaged Facts:

Focuses on food and beverage, consumer packaged goods, pet products and services, financial services, and demographic sectors
Market overview and insights on market trends, and opportunities
Market size and forecasts
Consumer insights and trends
Major companies, and products and services within a market

Business Source Premier This link opens in a new window Business Source Premier contains coverage for more than 2,300 journals covering a wide range of business topics. In addition, the databases includes access to company profiles, country reports, industry reports, market research reports and SWOT analyses.

MarketLine Industry Profiles

Analysis of factors affecting the sector’s performance
Leading companies, new entrants, key suppliers, and levels of competitor rivalry
Five-year forecasts
Porter’s Five Forces analysis
Company financial metrics

ABI/INFORM Complete This link opens in a new window ABI/INFORM Complete is a comprehensive business database with over 3,200 journals (over 2,460 full-text titles) covering business and economic conditions, corporate strategies, management techniques, as well as competitive and product information. It consists of: ABI Global, ABI Archive, ABI Images, ABI Trade and Industry, Dateline, Business Dissertations, Hoovers, Oxford Research, Wall Street Journal, SnapShots North American, and EIU. Coverage: 1971 to date.

D&B First Research Reports:

Industry’s competitive landscape, operations & tech, sales & marketing, finance & regulation
Industry employment growth and wages
Industry indicators, revenue forecasts, trends, drivers, challenges, opportunities, and executive insights

Plunkett Analytics Reports:

Industry’s current, historical, and projected revenues, and CAGR
Current and historical employee count, benchmarks
Leading company profiles and company rankings

Acquisedata Industry Snapshots:

Emerging industries in North America, Europe and, Asia-Pacific
Industry overviews, financial results, and corporate news

Fitch Connect This link opens in a new window Covers up to 175 markets worldwide. It provides daily alerts and news stories, country risk ratings, economic analyses and forecasts. It also contains market research and forecast reports covering about 14 industries in 55 countries and a database of thousands of multinational companies.
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Impact of geopolitics and new technologies on industries
Daily industry analysis

Find Articles on Markets, Industries, and Consumers

Business Source Premier This link opens in a new window Business Source Premier contains coverage for more than 2,300 journals covering a wide range of business topics. In addition, the databases includes access to company profiles, country reports, industry reports, market research reports and SWOT analyses.
ABI/INFORM Complete This link opens in a new window ABI/INFORM Complete is a comprehensive business database with over 3,200 journals (over 2,460 full-text titles) covering business and economic conditions, corporate strategies, management techniques, as well as competitive and product information. It consists of: ABI Global, ABI Archive, ABI Images, ABI Trade and Industry, Dateline, Business Dissertations, Hoovers, Oxford Research, Wall Street Journal, SnapShots North American, and EIU. Coverage: 1971 to date.

Search ABI/ Inform Complete and Business Source Premier to find articles from scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, and newspapers on markets, industries, and consumers. For example, you can search for:

[industry name] AND (trend* OR projection* OR forecast*)
"college students" AND (psychographics OR consumer*)

Find Consumer Demographic and Lifestyle Data

Social Explorer This link opens in a new window Provides thousands of interactive and downloadable data maps, charts, and reports with built-in data indicators related to demographic, economy, health, politics, crime, and environmental information about the United States.
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Provides thousands of interactive and downloadable data maps, charts, and reports with built-in data indicators related to demographic, economy, health, politics, crime, and environmental information about the United States.

ReferenceUSA This link opens in a new window ReferenceUSA is a database providing access to information on over 25 million businesses and more than 262 million consumers. Business listings include such data as company names, phone numbers, complete addresses, key executive names, SIC Codes, employee size, sales volume, geo-codes for mapping, contact details, franchise and brand information, news, liens, judgments and bankruptcies, and credit rating scores.
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Reference USA's U.S. Consumers/Lifestyles database has continuously updated data on more than 240 million U.S. consumers. You can search by consumer lifestyles and purchasing behaviors.

Policy Map This link opens in a new window
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Create maps, tables, and reports with PolicyMap an online mapping tool with data on demographics, real estate, health, jobs and more in communities across the United States.