Consumer market research is the process of gathering data on a consumer goods market (personal-use goods and services such as toothpaste or retail sales). This includes information on the current and potential customers, as well as the competitive landscape of the market.
Market research is one of the key factors used in maintaining competitiveness over competitors. Market research provides important information to identify and analyze the market need, market size and competition. Market-research techniques encompass both qualitative techniques such as focus groups, in-depth interviews, and ethnography, as well as quantitative techniques such as customer surveys, and analysis of secondary data.
Primary research involves collecting data from the source (i.e. consumers) such as conducting surveys or focus groups. It can be very targeted, useful, time consuming, labor-intensive, and expensive.
Secondary research involves using data that has already been collected (e.g. statistics or market research reports). Because you do not control how or what data is collected, there may be times where you cannot find the exact type of information you want from secondary sources.
With Industry Research, you are researching major business groupings and looking for trends, checking who the competitors are, and analyzing the growth of an industry. The easiest way to think about industry research is to think about who the competitors are. For instance, if you’re starting a restaurant, your competition is other restaurants. So, you’re in the restaurant (or food service) industry.
Goverment Resources:
BLS reports on over 100 industries, organized by NAICS code or industry name, focusing on employment, labor, and trends.
Deloitte offers industry prediction reports for state government, banking and securities, commercial real estate, energy and resources, insurance, payments, process and industrial products, renewable energy, retail and talent strategies industries
The "Data by Sector" menu to the left provides access to official government data from the U.S. Census on topics related to broad industry sectors.
The Current Industrial Report (CIR) program provides monthly, quarterly, and annual measures of industrial activity, including data on production and shipments of selected products
The Industry Snapshots present key statistics from the Economic Census and per capita ratios using data from Population Estimates for a user-selected industry.
The resource guides provide sources for industry information, research, and analysis for more than 400 industries. Individual guides for each of these industries identify resources available from trade associations, research firms, and other sources, with resource categories referenced in these guides including industry analysis, trends, statistics, and forecasts, financial statements and financial ratios, compensation and salary surveys, and business valuation resources.
Industry Index allows you to find financial market data by industry, compare performance of top companies within an industry, and find news and top-ranked analysts.