Category Analysis

Bring yourself up to speed by starting with a market or industry report.  These secondary research tools define categories (sometimes not precisely as you would wish), estimate market size and growth potential, describe the competitive forces impacting the industry and identify key players. 

Don't forget to take advantage of the links to trade news and associations to learn about the most recent developments.

Search for craft beer and skin care and body washes.

  Euromonitor (Passport)

  Mintel Insights & Analytics  Limitations on Use
Offers product and industry market research reports covering U.S. and international marketplaces. Each report combines data and analysis of the competitive landscape, supply chain, market-share size and trends, and consumer profiles. Analytics advance search monitors new product activity in consumer packaged goods markets worldwide.

  IBISWorld
Provides access to U.S. and global industry market research reports.

  Statista
Provides a portal to statistics and studies gathered by market researchers, trade organizations, scientific publications, and government sources. Topics covered include industries, media, companies, product categories, and countries.

Category Update

Update industry reports by browsing and searching trade journals and association web sites.  These sources discuss latest trends, news about regulatory developments and hot topics.

General business article databases such as ABI Inform and Business Source Premier bring together relevant articles from a wide range of trade journals.

  ABI/INFORM Collection (ProQuest)
Provides access to scholarly journals, dissertations, working papers, key business and economics periodicals, and country- and industry-focused reports.

  Business Source Premier (EBSCO)
Provides access to a wide range of academic business journals and trade magazines. Topics include management, marketing, finance, economics, and management information systems. Full text access may be embargoed for up to three years. Coverage goes back to 1965.

Competitor Analysis

The first step in the competitor analysis is to choose relevant competitors.  The industry reports, news you've gathered in the category analysis and the case itself should provide insight into firms competing in your defined market. 

Once you have identified potential competitors, reading company profiles and reports (see the list of databases below) will be helpful. 

Of course you'll scour your competitors web sites, but don't neglect looking over 10K's or annual reports for public companies. 

Note that reports and data on private companies may be sparse, so you may need to rely on news and an analysis of their web sites. 

Just as you updated industry reports with news, do so for the competitor analysis.

  Euromonitor (Passport)

  D&B Hoovers
Offers public and private company and industry information including company profiles, market research reports from Marketline, Freedonia, Euromonitor, and RMA updated with recent news, executive profiles, and analyst reports.

  Global New Products Database (Mintel)

Customer Analysis

Market research reports are rich sources for understanding consumer behavior around product categories.  Mintel and Marketresearch.com are particularly useful for understanding target customers by generation and other attributes.

Scholarly research (discoverable through ABI Inform, Business Source Premier & PsycInfo)  on "consumer behavior" "consumer attitudes" purchasing or "decision making" may not always be timely but it is typically reliable. 

You may find some very interesting results by googling.  Be discriminating about using reports that don't source data presented.  Whenever appropriate seek out underlying source data.  See Business Sources:  How to Evaluate Them

  Catalyst MRI Simmons
Provides access to the results of a National Consumer Study (most recent studies embargoed) encompassing demographics, lifestyle statements, and consumer behaviors. Supports the creation of custom cross tabulations or quick reports.

  MarketResearch.com Academic  Limitations on Use
Provides marketing reports for many industries and demographic reports on a variety of age groups. Documents are formatted as Adobe Acrobat or PowerPoint files.

Marketing Plan

Crafting an integrated marketing plan is primarily a creative project.  Nonetheless, expect to be able to defend your marketing recommendations by referring to studies and cases evaluating similar techniques.  You can find "how to", practitioner advice and rigorous research on marketing topics in books and articles discoverable in the following databases

  Advertising Insights (Kantar Media)  Tutorial
Creates custom reports on advertising expenditures across media channels including TV, magazines, newspapers, radio, outdoor and internet displays on the level of industries, categories, brands, products, and advertisers going back to 2017. Formerly known as Ad$pender.

  eMarketer
Offers data and reports related to digital marketing. Topics include advertising spending, digital marketing, social media, media usage, e-commerce, email marketing, and device usage. Coverage is global.

  Falvey Book Search

  WARC
Offers information on global advertising and marketing trends including case studies, articles, reports, opinion pieces, and expenditure data. Formerly known as World Advertising Research Center.