ENT 403: Marketing for Small Firms
- Identifying Clients & Targeting Industries
Best Practices - Financial Benchmarking
- Industry Analysis
- Marketing Reports
For other topics, try:
Business Librarian: Steve Cramer
smcramer@uncg.edu
336-256-0346
AIM & Google Talk: stevebizlib
Windows Messenger: smcramer@uncg.edu
1. Identifying Clients & Targeting Industries
Clients:
Industries:
2. Best Practices
Best Practices
- Provides summaries (often quite detailed) of best practice research conducted for major corporations.
- Covers business operations, customer service, human resources, e-commerce, sales and marketing, and knowledge management.
- Searchable by company, industry, and topic.
- More info
3. Financial Benchmarking
Dun & Bradstreet Key Business Ratios
- Provides 14 financial ratios for 800 products and services, arranged by SIC code.
- Data can be exported into Excel.
- More info
RMA Annual Statement Studies in OneSource Global (select "International Businesses" in ReferenceUSA)
- Provides the RMA Industry Norms in PDF format
- To find the RMA link in OneSource Global, look up an industry.
- More info
Census Business & Industry Reports
- Portal for all Census research on economic aspects, most based on NAICS codes. Includes:
- County Business Patterns
- Provides number of establishments and payroll size for a geographical area.
- Covers states, counties, zip codes, and metro areas.
- Retail & Wholesale Trade
- Monthly, quarterly, and annual data on sales, inventories, purchases, expenses, etc.
- More detailed data is available from the Economic Census (see below).
- Annual Survey of Manufactures
- Covers employment, payroll, value added, cost of materials consumed, value of shipments, etc.
- More detailed data is available from the Economic Census (see below).
Economic Census (2002 & 2007)
- Conducted every five years (years ending in -2 and -7).
- Provides data from the U.S. to cities from 2 to 6-digit NAICS codes.
- Covers statistics like:
- number of establishments, sales, payroll, and paid employees
- sales and payroll ratios
- value of shipments by industry and detailed product
- cost of materials
- retail sales by square foot
- product line sales (product mix data)
- sales size by firms
- concentration by largest firms
- sales by class of customer
- and other industry-specific data.
4. Industry Analysis
IBIS Industry Market Research
- Provides detailed reports on over 720 U.S. industries.
- Each report includes trends, statistics, industry structure, product & customer segmentation, performance analysis, major players & market share, external drivers, 5-year forecasts with forecast analysis, and more.
- Most IBIS reports are updated three or four times a year.
- More info
Manufacturing & Distribution USA 2009 (5th edition)
- Provides statistics on 460 industries, listed by NAICS codes.
- The statistics include the number of establishments, employment, wages, production, selected ratios, leading companies, materials consumed, product share, and industry data by state.
- The various indexes are in the third volume.
See Industry Analysis for a full list of resources.
5. Marketing Reports
Mintel Market Research Reports
- Provides market and consumer research reports, for many sectors.
- Now also provides reports on the African-American, Asian-American, & U.S. Hispanic markets.
- International in scope, but with emphasis on the U.S. and Europe.
- Most of the reports covers market drivers, market share, size, structure, segmentation, trends, consumer expenditure and spending patterns, psychographics, forecasts, and company and brand profiles.
- More info
DemographicsNow
- Covers U.S. population, age, race and ethnicity, income, housing, employment characteristics, and consumer expeditures.
- Provides data for census block-groups, census tracts, zip codes, cities, urban areas, counties, and states, as well as custom radiuses defined by the user.
- Areas can be compared and ranked.
- Provide tables, graphs, pie charts, and maps, which can be can be downloaded into Excel, Word, or Adobe Acrobat Reader.
- More info
SimplyMap (10 concurrent users)
- A web-based mapping database for developing thematic maps and reports using thousands of demographic, business, and marketing data variables.
- Each user accesses SimplyMap through a "personal workspace"; you will need to create an account the first time you use the database.
- Covers census block-groups, census tracts, zip codes, cities, counties, states, and the entire United States.
- Includes Mediamark Research (MRI) data, covering usage and consumption for thousands of products, including brand data, details of frequency of usage, and more.
- Data can be exported and maps can be printed.
- More info
American FactFinder, U.S. Census Bureau
- The Census' search engine for population, housing, and economic data.
- You can search by state, city, county, or zip code, or just browse data for the entire U.S.
- Covers the 2000 Census, American Community Survey (annual data), the Economic Census, and more.
- Statistical Warehouse and SimplyMap provide more search, ranking, and/or mapping options.
