BUS 418

Listening to the Customer

This Course Research Guide was developed to support course-specific research needs. Course guides are created through collaborative efforts between the Business Librarian and the instructor and focus on curricula and departmental learning outcomes.

The Orfalea College of Business Marketing faculty and the Business Librarian have created a list of the top-10 Library databases for marketing research at the undergraduate level. The list provides detailed descriptions and search tips for each database.
Please visit the Top-10 List.

Click the camera icon to view a demonstration tutorial of the database.

MRI (Mediamark) Online

Most business faculty and students are familiar with Mediamark and Simmons print volumes - Simmons (1994) and MRI MediaMark (1998). In fall of 2004, Mediamark released a Web version of the print volumes.

The online version, like the 20 print volumes, provide accurate and timely information for a variety of media and marketing applications. The online version allows you to create customized reports in Excel and to save or print instantly! Data includes over 450 product categories, including:

• Overall incidence of users
• Users by demographics
• Users by media exposure
• Users by readership of nearly 170 magazines
• Volume of usage
• Usage by brand

Answers questions such as:

• What percent of the population uses the product at all?
• What percent uses your brand?
• How does that compare to competing brands?
• What is the demographic profile of the product category?
• Which media reach the users of this category?

MarketResearch.com
Market research reports are very costly - the reason is simple: they are comprehensive in scope and include massive amounts of statistical and market data including market size, new product trends, retail level data, consumer profiles, competitive landscape and other related data.
MarketResearch.com Academic, formerly Kalorama Academic, offers access to previously unavailable market research reports. This fully searchable and browseable repository offers the complete text of over 500 market research reports on dozens of topics, complete with graphs, tables and charts.

ABI Inform
ABI/INFORM provides in-depth coverage of business issues, management techniques, competitive information, and a variety of other topics. It indexes and abstracts articles from more than 1,000 leading business and management publications, including over 350 English-language titles from outside the United States. More than half of the articles are available in full-text or full-image.

TIP: Select Business - Snapshots North America form the Database drop box

TIP: Definition: CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate - see investopedia for a complete definition)

Global Market Information Database
Covers world consumer markets for thousands of products. In addition, Global Market Information Database offers comprehensive full-text market reports on industries, product categories, countries and companies.
TIP: From the top navigation menu select Browse reports.

Hoover's Online
Hoover's, Inc. delivers comprehensive company, industry, and market intelligence that drives business growth. Hoover's covers 12 million companies with in-depth coverage of 35,000 of the world's top business enterprises.

Factiva
A massive database that delivers detailed company financials, company-to-industry ratios, and full-text articles from over 6,000 business-related sources. Indexes many top advertising and marketing journals including:

Advertising Age
Adweek
American Demographics
Brand Strategy
Brandweek
Factiva Advertising & Media Digest
Journal of Advertising
Marketing Management

TIP: For more resources that deliver comprehensive company-related information visit the Company Information Research Guide.

TableBase
Table Base is a database comprised of tabular information of a strategic nature. The tables provide such information as: market share, market size, capacity, production, imports, exports, sales, product and brand rankings, forecasts and demographics. Sample table data:

Top 10 Pizza Brands (52 Weeks Ended June 18, 2006)
DiGiorno
Red Baron
Tombstone
Private Label
Freschetta
Totino's Party Pizza
Tony's
California Pizza Kitchen
Stouffer's
Jack's Original

Source: Information Resources Inc.

Business & Industry
Business & Industry is a broad-based business information database that focuses on facts, figures, events and market information about companies, industries, products and markets. It covers all industries and is international in scope. B&I draws content from over 1000 trade and industry publications, regional, national and international newspapers, business dailies and newsletters. Use B&I when you want to find company, industry, market and product information.

Print Resources
Market Share Reporter
REF HF5410 .M33
MSR is a compilation of market share reports from periodical literature. Use to gather marketing research, economic analysis, planning, etc.

Business Rankings Annual
REF HG 4050 .B88
Lists of companies, products, services and activities compiled from a wide variety of published sources. The rankings included everything from accounting firms to yogurt!

Government Industry Data ( Economic Census): Market Concentration
Herfindahl-Hirschman Index ( HHI ) and Market Concentration
"HHI" means the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, a commonly accepted measure of market concentration. It is calculated by squaring the market share of each firm competing in the market and then summing the resulting numbers. For example, for a market consisting of four firms with shares of thirty, thirty, twenty and twenty percent, the HHI is 2600 (30 2 + 30 2 + 20 2 + 20 2 = 2600). The HHI takes into account the relative size and distribution of the firms in a market and approaches zero when a market consists of a large number of firms of relatively equal size. The HHI increases both as the number of firms in the market decreases and as the disparity in size between those firms increases.

Markets in which the HHI is between 1000 and 1800 points are considered to be moderately concentrated, and those in which the HHI is in excess of 1800 points are considered to be concentrated. Transactions that increase the HHI by more than 100 points in concentrated markets presumptively raise antitrust concerns under the Horizontal Merger Guidelines issued by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. For additional information visit USDOJ.

TIP: To locate an HHI for a specific NAICS start at the 2002 Economic Census.
Next, select a Sector Report (e.g. Manufacturing). Next, select Concentration Ratios from the Subject Series.

Lexis Nexis
Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe provides a menu-driven interface to business, current events, legal and medical information. It has full-text coverage of nearly 5,000 newspapers, magazines, wire services, federal and state court opinions, federal and state statutes, federal regulations, patents, and SEC filings such as 10-Ks and 10-Qs. There is access to company profiles, industry and market research, and trade journal articles.

For a comprehensive list of Political, Economic, Socio-cultural and Technology resources visit the PEST Analysis Research Guide .

Government Resources

Census

ACS

FactFinder

Print Resources
Sourcebook of Zip Code Demographics
HB849.4 .S68 - Ask at Reference Desk
Provides detailed information about every Zip code and county in the U.S. Includes:

2000 updates and 2005 forecasts
All residential and non-residential U.S. Zip Codes
Business data including total firms and total employees
Spending potential indices for 20 product and service categories
Dominant ACORN lifestyle segmentation type for each ZIP Code

Lifestyle Market Analyst
REF HF 5415.33U6 .L54
Provides preliminary market analysis at the local, regional or national level. Includes extensive lifestyle information on the interests, hobbies, and activities popular in each geographic and demographic market.
Please note that San Luis Obispo is in the Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-San Luis Obispo, CA section.

Market Guide (Editor & Publisher)
REF HF 5905.E38
Includes MSAs, Market Rankings by County, MSA, and City, Population Demographics, Retail Sales, Housing Income, E&P Indices, etc.

Not Finding What You Need?

Business Research Central offers more than 60 Business Research Guides. Topics include Demographics, Consumer Behavior, Potential Geographic Markets, Advertising Data and many other related marketing topics.

Frank Vuotto, M.L.I.S., M.A.
Business & Agribusiness Librarian, Faculty
California Polytechnic State University
Robert E. Kennedy Library
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407

fvuotto@calpoly.edu