Researching the industry that your company is a part of can be extremely beneficial to the growth and long-term success of your company. Understanding the economy, as well as the demographic changes occurring in the U.S. can lead to new products and services, and changes in existing ones. When first researching data for your business, I suggest learning more about your competitors and other business owners in your industry. Research competitors’ demographics, target markets, company success, number of employees, years in business, etc. This is going to give you an idea of what your competition is like, and help you create tactics to be on top. After doing extensive research on the industry and your competitors, dive right into customer profiles and demographics.

Places to Research:

·       Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov/ The Bureau is an excellent source for data on the economy and the people of the U.S. It’s a great place to get an overview on the industry your business is a part of. This website provides data on people, households, businesses, industries, geography and recent news.  This website also provides the Survey of Business Owners (SBO), which updated every five years. It’s a great place to find stats on business ownership (based on various demographics), characteristics of businesses, and characteristics of business owners. 

·       Other stores in your industry: Visit other companies’ websites and stores to get an idea of what they’re doing right when it comes to attracting customers. Once you have an idea of the positive aspects of your competitors, figure out what would make your company stand out above the others. Are their prices too high? Is their website amateur? Is the customer service good/bad?

·       ResearchWikis.com: This website provides free market research for over 250 industries and has contributors worldwide. The goal of ResearchWikis.com is to “let the global community of research and others contribute high-level core research on all major business research topics” (http://www.researchwikis.com/Main_Page).

·       Outsource: Market research can be very difficult and sometimes you may not know what to do with the information you receive. It’s about searching, sorting, and analyzing. This could get extremely time consuming and confusing. Outsourcing your market researching to a professional allows you to focus on other areas of your business, things you are more familiar with. Since market researching is an important element to the workings of your business, it’s sometimes best to leave this task up to the professionals.