BUS 210:Principles of Marketing

In order to begin targeting your potential customer base, you need to develop a strategy to gather quality data.

You will use a variety of databases to gather background information and then a specific database to pull market segmentation reports.

Scenario: You want to open up a franchise and need to understand if this is a sound investment and if there is potential to make a profit. You then need to determine who will be your target demographics, figure out their locations, and understand their related behaviors to the industry. 

Suggestion:

I strongly suggest you gather background information on your topic first before you head over to the Simmons Insights database to pull psychographic data from Simmons. Simmons is best served when you have a working hypothesis and want to confirm your hypothesis.

For example, if I wanted to sell wine to a specific demographic, I would start by gathering information on EBSCO for scholarly articles regarding who is drinking wine, the wine industry, and how to market to "X" individuals.

IBIS World and Mergent can be used to gather information on the industry level and company level respectively.
 

Once you have an idea for your potential target, for example, "My research in EBSCO let me know that there is an upward trend of minority Millenials drinking wine", I can now take this hypothesis to select Millenials and discover their buying habits, their likes and dislikes, their alcohol consumption, and etc, in order to determine whether my hypothesis that I got from other databases is either confirmed or proven untrue.
 

If proven untrue you can go back to your research in EBSCO and see where the data may have been skewed OR if Simmons is telling you that it is actually generation X that is drinking more wine then you can use this to go back to EBSCO and start a new search strategy.

This is usually where students run into the most issues so if you get stuck PLEASE reach out to me and we can set up a meeting and I can help you make sense of your search strategy.

Suggestions

EBSCOhost Database

• Use the EBSCOhost database in order to gather scholarly peer-reviewed articles on your topic. 
  When you access the database make sure you select all available databases to search through by clicking on "Choose Databases" and selecting them all. 
• Begin with simple search results to get as many articles to populate as possible. Use the filtration methods to narrow down your searches.
• Use the filtration method located on the left-hand side to narrow your searches to "Peer-reviewed" 
• Use the articles to get an idea of potential industry trends or target audience demographics.

IBIS World

• Use IBIS World to gather industry-specific reports.
• These reports can be downloaded into a PDF format by clicking the download button at the top of the report.
• You can search for U.S wide industry reports or U.S State-specific reports. 
• IBIS World industry report will help you determine if your business venture is a viable business opportunity or not depending on the market trends.
• Use the "Major Companies" tab to determine who the major players are in this industry. 

Mergent Intellect

• Use Mergent Intellect to gather company financials for publically traded companies. 
• This database will mainly be used to gather information on either your direct competitors in the industry or if you are creating a fast-food franchise, this database could help you determine the overall strength of the franchise. 

SIMMONS Insights

• Use SIMMONS Insights to compile a variety of demographic and market segmentation for a variety of consumers and target markets.
• Use the quick reports feature to gather quick demographic, segmentation, and geography information on a particular target.
• Use the cross tab feature to compare multiple targets together and discover trends.
• Use the Brand Catalyst explorer and reporter feature to compile more specific and detailed data on your target.