Hi! I am Jennifer Freer, your business librarian! I can help you navigate through the library business resources to find information, articles, and books. I can also help with citation in APA, MLA and Chicago plus I can help you use Zotero. The green button above has links to book an appointment or try to catch me on chat. Email jlfwml@rit.edu to ask questions if that works better for you!
Information has value. Monetary value. Strategic value.
Knowing about your company, product, industry and customers will help justify strategic choices.
Some information is quantitative like the revenues for a company. This is a dollar figure which can be measured. In the United States, publicly traded companies report this number and anyone can find out the revenues.
Other information is qualitative like why are consumers attracted to a product in one market but not another. Knowing this is not easy. Some companies sell information to help understand why consumers behave in different ways. This information is extremely expensive due to the labor and expertise required to gather it.
RIT Libraries subscribes to some information products to help students practice searching for and working with premium information. Below are some of the products that can help with finding premium marketing information to help form informed decisions and recommendations.
You can start your research in any order that works for you. Over the years I have found this order works well. By starting with market research you are ruling in that there is a relatively current report that has almost all the info you need in one place. Now that is nice when it happens but unfortunately not every product or service gets great coverage. It is always possible that your topic has little to no coverage.
Mintel sells consumer market research reports. Businesses can buy individual reports or subscribe to the platform and choose to buy access to different modules. RIT subscribes to the US section of consumer reports only. To better understand the monetary value of these reports take a look here at how much an individual report costs from Mintel. Students at RIT have access to Mintel reports for class projects using the library links below. Keep in mind most library databases are only for class use and cannot be used for other purposes or shared with individuals outside of RIT.
Make sure for each report you look at you look at the accompanying Databook found in the DOWNLOAD section.
Next take a look in Passport. Look at the Dashboards, the Industry Reports and the Lifestyle Reports. Not every consumer industry is covered. Our subscription to Passport includes reports covering most countries. It is a great tool to compare markets in countries. Not every country is covered for every consumer industry. Passport help videos.
Searching across newspapers and more can help you find reviews, business news, press releases.
Also search the web for free trade magazines and trade association info. Google is great tool for this.
Consumer Segments help a marketer understand who your current and potential customers are. Claritas sells access to large datasets that assist with the analysis of consumer demographics, economics, psychographics.
If your research is related to an actual company visit your company website to learn everything about the company and the product that the company puts out into the world. Look for press or news releases. Look to see if there is an Investors or Shareholders section. This will be an indicator that the company is public which is an indicator that more info will be released into the world.
Start to build a vocabulary of words and phrases that represent the product. There is no agreed to language across products. Is it mixed drinks or cocktails? That depends on who is writing the text.
Try an advanced Google site search to mine to see if words or phrases show up. Example for the word partners. When using Google add site: to the front of a url to them be able to search for word or "phrases".
Use of these resources is reserved for current RIT students, faculty and staff for academic and teaching purposes only.
Use of RIT resources is reserved for current RIT students, faculty
and staff for academic and teaching purposes only.
Please contact your librarian with any questions.
