Research Guides: Marketing: Market Research

Data for market research is gathered through both primary and secondary research.

Primary data: is based on research that you conduct yourself using tools such as surveys, polls, focus groups, and interviews. Primary research is used to address a specific problem. While primary data can be more thorough and insightful, it is costly and time consuming to collect such data and conducting such research requires special skills.
Secondary data: is based on research done by others, such as government agencies, market research firms, and trade associations. Examples of secondary sources include statistics and market research reports. These sources can save you a lot of time but as you have no control over how and what pieces of data were collected, they may not always be specific enough for your needs.

Secondary Data

Search your company,product or industry and combine with terms, such as:
Pepsico and (market* or advertis*)
AND automobiles and hispanic*

*retrieves market, markets, marketing, marketed, etc.

Richard K. Miller Ebooks
Ebooks updated annual on marketing and advertising industry segments, consumer use and behavior, market research, and U.S. city and community demographics.

Business Source Premier [EBSCO] This link opens in a new window
Core resource for business research, access full-text articles, country reports, industry/company profiles, and SWOT analyses.
ABI/INFORM Collection [PROQUEST] This link opens in a new window
Core database for business research, contains full-text articles from scholarly journals and industry magazines, plus profiles of industries, companies, and markets.

Wall Street Journal [PROQUEST] This link opens in a new window
Full text access to the Wall Street Journal (Eastern edition).