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Secondary Market Research Resources

There is a large amount of market research information available in print, on electronic databases, and on the web. Use this guide as a starting point for your research but remember that there are many more sources than those listed here.  

Don't hesitate to ask for help at any of the SFU Library branches.  You may also contact our reference librarians via telephone, chat, or email using our Ask a Librarian services.

Asking for help can save you a lot of time!

1. First Steps

1.a. What are you looking for?
1.b. Who might publish the information you need?

2. Market Overview

2.a. Journals & Magazines
2.b. Trade Associations
2.c. Industry Surveys
2.d. Government Sources
2.e. Local Information
2.f.  Further Sources

3.  Competitors

3.a. Directories
3.b. Annual Reports / Financial Info.
3.c. Market share
3.d. Rankings

4.  Business Conditions

4.a. Journals & Magazines
4.b. Government Sources

5.  Demographics and Consumer Behaviour

5.a. Journals and Magazines
5.b. Government Sources
5.c. Further Sources

1. First Steps

Before you start searching, it pays to spend a few minutes thinking about (a) what you are searching for; and (b) who might publish that information.

1. a. What are you are searching for?

Presuming that you aren't going to be able to find a completely perfect report on your topic (current data, relevant geographic area, exact product, comprehensive, etc.), you need to think about what the components of a perfect report might be so that you can look for them and build your own report.

  • What do you need to know about the broad market for your type of product or for your industry?
  • What would you like to know about the competitors and alternative products?
  • Are the general business conditions likely to play a factor?
  • Do you need to know anything about the demographics and preferences of consumers?

This guide is organised roughly by the types of sources that may answer these types of questions. Knowing exactly what your questions are before you start searching will help you choose relevant tools and sources and will save you time!

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1. b. Who might publish the information you need?

Common sources of marketing information include trade associations, government departments, private research firms, and academic researchers. Details about reports created by any of these organisations may appear in business news and trade publications. Your search will be more efficient if you start by thinking about who is most likely to gather and publish the information you need. For example, governments are great at publishing data on business conditions. Academics, on the other hand, tend to research (and publish in academic/scholarly journals) on things like consumer behaviour and motivations.

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2.  Market Overview

2.a.  Journals & Magazines

Articles in the business press are a great source of infomation about industry trends, new products, market projections, and other topics.
If you are looking for information on a specific industry or company, you don't have to flip through journals and newspapers hoping to find relevant articles. There are comprehensive indexes to business publications which you can search online to find articles about your topic. These indexes will give you citations to print journals and newspapers and many of them will also provide the full text of the articles on your computer. At SFU, as in many libraries, we refer to online indexes as databases.

To learn about the different types of information available in periodicals (primary, secondary, scholarly, etc.), read the SFU Library guide: What is a Scholarly Journal?.

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Analyzing Your Topic

Save lots of time!  Before searching the databases listed below, analyze your topic: break it down into concepts and think of synonyms for each idea.

When searching library catalogues or other electronic databases, use truncation symbols to find all variations of a term.

The asterisk ( * ) is the most common truncation symbol. It's used by many of the databases available through the SFU Library. For example, the SFU Library catalogue, Business Source Complete, and CBCA Business all use it. A search for "forest* " in any of these databases will result in items containing any of:  forestry, forest, and forests.

Use AND / OR / NOT to combine terms to narrow or broaden your database searches.
 

AND requires BOTH terms to be found in search results
- useful when searching different concepts/ideas
- e.g., advertising AND children

OR requires EITHER term to be found in search results
- useful when searching synonyms and word variations
- e.g., youth or juvenile or teen or teenager

NOT eliminates term(s) from search results
- use with caution: you may eliminate more than you plan to!

Sample Search Question:
 

    Topic: What are the trends in the women's clothing market?
    Concepts: clothing AND women AND trend*
    Synonyms: apparel AND female AND fashion
 

Your research will be more successful if you think of several synonyms for the words in your topic.

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Key Article Databases

  • Academic Search Premier
    Fulltext articles from a wide range of titles available online.  Many of  the journals covered are "popular" so be careful if you need to find "academic" sources.  One way to limit your search to more academic sources is to check the box beside "peer-reviewed" on the Advanced search screen.
  • Business Source Complete
    Fulltext for 1100 scholarly business journals, as well as thousands of trade magazines in all business areas. Also includes several thousand company, industry, and market reports.
  • Canadian Newsstand
    Fulltext database of major Canadian newspapers such as the Vancouver Sun, the Calgary Herald, and the Montreal Gazette, as well as of some small BC papers such as the Burnaby Now.
  • LexisNexis
    Fulltext database of business, legal, and news publications. American with strong Canadian and international coverage. Many company directories as well as business/industry/general news sources from around the world.
  • PsycInfo
    Marketing has many psychology aspects (how do people think? how do they react?). PsycInfo covers many marketing journals in addition to hundreds of psychology sources that touch on marketing and consumer behaviour.

Connect to the list of article indexes for the Marketing Area  for further suggestions.

From Citation to Article explains the many ways to find the actual article(s) after you have searched the databases.

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2.b.  Trade Associations

Trade or industry associations can be excellent sources for statistics and other industry information, as well as for contact names.  Consult these sources to identify associations, then use a search engine such as Google or MetaCrawler to search the Internet for association web pages.

A few good places to start your search for relevant associations:
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2.c.  Industry surveys and market reports

Industry surveys and market reports may provide detailed information about your industry or market, but it can be very difficult to find a survey that perfectly matches your specific product, region, and industry. Remember that American and global surveys may be relevant to Canada as trends, products, and other developments are often very similar in many countries.

Start with the sample resources listed below, then check the Industry Surveys guide for many more resources and search tips.

  • Passport GMID : This database contains market reports offering strategic analysis of consumer lifestyles, service and retail markets, global industry overviews, and in-depth consumer markets, in addition to data on specific products, companies, and countries.
  • Datamonitor360 : Over 7100 industry profiles, as well as deeper reports on key sectors such as life sciences, energy, and technology. 
  • Business Source Complete : Select Industry Overview in the Document Type area of the search screen, then search for your industry.
  • Gale ebooks that are focused on industries such as the Encyclopedia of Emerging Industries, the Encyclopedia of Global Industries, and the Encyclopedia of American Industries. Start your search by entering the name of your commodity, product, or sector, or even just the name of a major company in the industry.
  • Industry Canada Strategis: Information by Industrial Sector
  • Standard and Poor's Industry Surveys (Bennett and Belzberg Reference: HC 106.6 S74)
  • United States Census Bureau: Current Industrial Reports (Check out the US Census Bureau's Business & Industry page for additional data and reports.)
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2.d.  Government Sources

Governments collect and publish a large amount of information on all aspects of Canadian life.  Start with these sources, then check out longer SFU Library guides such as Statistics - BC, Statistics - Canada and the Government Information section of the main Marketing research guide.


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2. e. Local Information

Finding good local information can be very challenging. If you want to find information/data specifically about Vancouver, you must be prepared to do some digging. You may discover that the very specific local information you are hoping to find is not available - you may have to adapt the information that's available to suit your purposes. A selection of local information sources:

Examples of the type of local information one might find on these sites:

Be sure to search the Canadian news indexes:

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2.f.  Further Sources

  • Search the Library Catalogue by KEYWORD or SUBJECT using terms such as "market" or "trade" or "industry" plus the name of your product. Searching by KEYWORD is generally the best way to start. SUBJECT searching is more precise but you may miss useful titles. Example: a keyword search for bookselling will get you results with such subjects as Book industries and trade & Booksellers and bookselling.
  • Search the web to find discussions or studies about your industry or product. Use a search engine such as Google, or All The Web.  It sometimes helps to include the names of at least a couple of the key companies in the industry/market as part of your search.
     
  • N.B.: Most market research reports will not be found in libraries or free on the web due to cost and copyright issues. Some market research companies will publish brief reports on the web available to nonsubscribers. Check out Nielsen Canada for an example of such commercial information on the web.
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3. Competitors


3.a.  Directories

Directories provide information such as company or organization addresses and phone numbers, and may also provide executive's names, products, tradenames, and so on.  Traditionally, directories were available only in print but many useful titles are now accessible through electronic databases and on the web. Many web directories require you to register and pay a fee before you can use them, or will only let you access some of their contents for free.

Although basic directories like the Yellow Pages can be useful for company addresses and telephone numbers, many directories provide more in-depth information and are invaluable research tools. Connect to Hoover's brief profile of the Ballard Power Systems, Inc. for an example of a detailed listing. Note that SFU researchers also have access to longer and more detailed Hoover's profiles available online via LexisNexis.

There are hundreds of print directories available in libraries and almost as many available as commercial databases or on the web. Below is a sample list of a few key directories for Canadian company and organization information. Check out the brief guide to Canadian business directories for more. Also, search the SFU Library Catalogue by KEYWORD or SUBJECT using product or industry name plus "directories", e.g., "manufacturing and directories" or "retail and directories".

Vancouver and British Columbia

  • BC Manufacturers' Directory
  • BusinessFinder (MyTelus)
  • The Business in Vancouver Book of Lists (Bennett Information Desk and Belzberg + Surrey Reference: HF 5073 V3 B8): Updated lists appear weekly in Business in Vancouver (Newspaper Collection - 6th floor of the Bennett Library)

Canada

 
Specialised  (examples only)

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3.b.  Annual Reports / Financial Information

  • MINT Global
    Financial and brief descriptive information for thousands of major public companies in the world, and millions of private companies.
  • SEDAR (System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval).
    The system used since 1997 to electronically file information with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities. Includes annual reports, interim financial statements, press releases and prospectuses.
  • FPinfomart.ca
    Detailed company information for major Canadian companies (publicly traded) and briefer information for smaller Canadian corporations.
For more annual report resources and information about how to read annual reports and other financial statements, try the resources listed in our guides: Annual Reports and Ratio Analysis.


 
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3.c. Market share

  • Passport GMID : Includes market share information for over 3000 consumer goods companies in about 70 countries. 
     
  • Datamonitor360 : The Market Data Analytics resource within Datamonitor360 includes country-level market share data for many consumer goods.  Click on Databases, then on Market Data Analytics.
     
  • Market Share Reporter : Multiple editions available online for SFU researchers.
     
  • Also search Business Source Complete, Canadian Newsstand, and/or LexisNexis (News >> Business News Publications ) for articles in the business press which sometimes touch on market shares.
 
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3.d.  Rankings

See Company Information for further sources.

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4.  Business Conditions

4.a.  Journals & Magazines

Search Business Source Complete, Canadian Newsstand and/or LexisNexis for articles on business conditions and economic forecasts.

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 4.b.  Government Sources

 

 

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5. Demographics and Consumer Behaviour

5.a.  Journals and Magazines

Search  Business Source Complete, PsycINFO, Canadian Newsstand and/or LexisNexis for articles on demographics and consumer behaviour.
 
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5.b.  Government Sources

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5.c. Further Sources

  • FP Markets, Canadian Demographics (Bennett, Surrey, and Belzberg Reference: HF 5415.2 C31612).
    See the BUEC Buzz for a description of this valuable print source.
     
  • Ipsos News Centre
    Public opinion reports on topics ranging from consumer products to social issues. 
     
  • See Gallup.com for freely available Gallup public opinion polling reports. Largely US focused.
     
  • Best customers: demographics of consumer demand & Household spending: Who spends how much on what
    Two ebooks with data on the demographics of consumers in the United States. Data is taken from the Consumer Expenditure Survey of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Note: Search here to cover multiple editions of both Best Customers and Household Spending.
     
  • Passport GMID
    This database contains data on consumer trends in over 70 countries, including drinking and eating habits, spending patterns, and crime and culture indicators; as well as market size data on 330 consumer products in 50-80 countries.
     
  • Datamonitor360
    In addition to thousands of industry/market profiles, Datamonitor 360 also has a section with data across the global food, drinks, personal care, household products, pet care, news and magazine, and tobacco markets. Click on Databases, then on Market Data Analytics.
     
  • PCensus (Stand-alone computer, Bennett Library 3rd Floor & Belzberg Library)
    A database of demographic information from the 2006, 2001 and 1996 Censuses of Canada. Information can be searched by Census categories, postal codes or user-defined areas.
     
  • PMB Reports
    Detailed Canadian consumer data from the Print Measurement Bureau.
     
  • Business Plans and Profiles Index Carnegie Library of Pittsburg's list of (mostly) freely available Business Plans, from plans for accounting consulting firms to wineries. Business plans can be a great source for gathering cost information. They list some books as well as websites. Check the SFU catalogue for any titles they mention. If we don't have the title you are looking for, consider placing an interlibrary loan.


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Owned by: Mark Bodnar
Revised by: Mark Bodnar
Last Modified: 2012-01-13