LibGuides: Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship: Customers &amp; Market Research

Market Research

Just like Industry-level research, there is a wealth of information available for free online and within library subscription databases to help with market-level research, including data to help describe your customer segments. For a more detailed definition see Market Segment (via Investopedia).

In the course of researching your market, you will inevitably find 'the perfect report' that seems to match exactly what you need - but it will cost a prohibitive amount of money. While you have access to a number of sources for high-quality, professional, proprietary market research through the library, you will encounter reports that we don't have access to.

When doing market research, it's helpful to remember that what you are looking for may not exist (!) or it may exist and you can't access it. When this happens, you still have options like:

Gathering the information yourself through social science research methods, or
Using a proxy for the data you need by combining parts of industry, market or demographic/consumer research from adjacent or similar areas.

Being familiar with the general industry can help you make decisions about what proxy information is appropriate for you to use when describing your customers and calculating market size.

Competitors

Identifying competitors can be a challenging but fun part of market research. Depending on the nature of your ideas, it may be more clear who you are working with, as is the case with direct-to-consumer ventures, or you may need to dig a little deeper into scholarly literature or patents, as is often the case for more technical ventures.

Here are some strategies for identifying competitors:

Create a Company List using one or more of the resources on this page: Company Research
- Search by NAICS code, location, company size, verticals, etc.
Industry and market reports will sometimes have a section on 'major players' or 'companies' in that area
Search scholarly or patent publications
Check hashtags on social media related to your product or service - what companies are showing up?

Customer & Market Segments

International Demographics
From the US Census Bureau. List of partner organizations around the world.

SimplyAnalytics (Formerly SimplyMap) This link opens in a new window
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A web-based mapping, analytics, and data visualization application that incorporates access to many different demographic and consumer data sets.
SimplyAnalytics is an online data exploration and mapping tool that incorporates access to many different data sets including data from the US Census. Spatial data can be exported to ESRI Shapefile format. Tabular data can be exported in multiple formats for use with Microsoft Excel or other statistical analysis programs and maps and other visualization outputs can be exported to various graphic formats for including in reports and papers.
For first time users, please register with SimplyAnalytics using your Brown email address and do so while you are connected to the internet via Brown University's network.
IBISWorld This link opens in a new window
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Provides access to industry research reports U.S. and select international markets, current.
Current; IBISWorld provides access to two collections of research reports for business and marketing information. Industry Market Research Reports (typically 30-40 page reports) are available for 700 US industries; reports include key statistics, market segmentation, market characteristics, industry conditions, key factors, key competitors, industry performance, and industry outlook. US Specialized Industry Reports are market research reports for small or new industries. New reports are added every week.
Pitchbook This link opens in a new window
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Provides access to private equity and venture capital investment history with in-depth information, data, and statistics on companies, deals, funds, service providers, and investors, current.

First time users must register for an account. Follow the instructions here: https://libguides.brown.edu/pitchbook
Current; private equity and venture capital database with in-depth information, data and statistics on companies, deals, funds, service providers and investors.
CB Insights This link opens in a new window
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CB Insights is a venture capital and angel investment database that provides daily real-time information about venture capital and angel investor-backed startup companies, venture capital companies, angel investors and transactions in the United States; current.

RKMA Handbooks
This series compiles statistics, trands and data on a variety of consumer industries, including consumers and companies. They can be very long, so review the Table of Contents and 'find within' to find a keyword within the report
Pew Research Center
a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research does not take policy positions. A subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts.