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The possible topics for your research assignment vary widely.  As a result, there is not a core set of 2 or 3 sources that you can count on to have all of the answers that you need.  This guide will highlight a few important sources and skills. For further resources, use the general library research guide: Market Research and, most importantly, ask for help! 

You can get in-person help at the Reference Desks of any of our branches.  You may also contact us via email, telephone, and online chat using our Ask a Librarian services.  

Asking for help can save you a lot of time.

1.  Choosing a topic

  • Try scanning recent issues of academic market research journals to see the types of topics being covered.  You might want to start with such titles as:
    • International journal of market research : the journal of the Market Research Society
    • Marketing research
    • Journal of consumer policy
    • Journal of business and psychology
    • Journal of retailing
    • Marketing letters
    • Journal of international marketing and marketing research
    • Journal of empirical generalisations in marketing science
    TRY IT! Look up each of the above titles in the SFU Library catalogue (search by Journal Title).  Which ones are available online?
  • Scan recent market research textbooks (including your own!) for examples and topic categories.  You can find many such texts using the Subject: Marketing - Research in the catalogue. 
    TIP: Get the newest books at the top of the list by sorting your search (use the sort options at the top of the catalogue screen).
  • Search Business Source Complete for journal articles on market research, then scan for topics that look interesting (and viable!).
    TRY IT! Go into Business Source Complete and search for articles in peer reviewed journals with the Subjects: market* or consumer* .  Then try adding the terms method* or design in the All Text field to narrow your search. You'll still have hundreds of articles, so you might have to try some additional search terms to focus your search even further.

    TIP: An asterisk ( * ) will truncate a search term in most databases. E.g., market* will find market, marketing, markets, marketer...
  • Choose a topic that interests you!  Perhaps even something in a field that you are interested in for a career.  You will be immersed in your topic for several weeks, so it will be much easier if you have a personal interest.
     
  • Choose a broad topic area at first - you will eventually have to narrow the topic down to something that will suit a testable hypothesis, but any research that you do at the broader level will be relevant and useful.

2.  Analysing/narrowing your broad topic

Begin your research by analyzing your topic and breaking it down into concepts. Think of synonyms for each idea. Also try to think about some of the issues and related concepts.  More time spent at this stage of your research project will pay off in better results regardless of the source that you are searching. Note that as you begin your literature review, you will continue to come up with more concepts and synonyms - always be on the lookout for further terms that you could use!

  • Boolean operators allow you to combine terms to narrow or broaden your database searches.
  •      AND requires BOTH terms to be found in search results
         OR requires EITHER term to be found in search results
         NOT eliminates term(s) from search results
     
  • Sample Research Question
     Broad Topic: What are consumer attitudes toward "ethical" products?      Concepts: consumers AND  attitude* AND ethic* AND products      Synonyms: shopper* AND behavio* AND moral* AND purchases

Your research will be more successful if you think of several synonyms for the words in your topic and if you use truncation symbols in your initial searches. For example, for "children" try also "teen* or adolescen*."

TRY IT! If you were thinking of researching the factors that result in success for new products, what concepts and keywords would you need to start with?

3.  Reviewing the literature

  • Business Source Complete
    This should probably be the first place you search for marketing articles. BSC includes the fulltext of such key journals as the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Marketing Research, and Marketing Science.
    TIP: In BSC - Use the asterisk (*) to truncate a search term. Also use the online Thesaurus or Subject List (top of search screen, left side of the results screen) to find relevant subject headings.
  • PsycInfo
    Often overlooked by non-psychology students, PsycInfo covers articles in psychology journals and books, as well as some business journals. The focus of many psychology articles tends to be on why people behave the way they do, make the choices they do, and think the way they do. Sounds like marketing information, right? Note that PsycInfo looks and works a lot like Business Source Complete. Start with the thesaurus within PsycInfo to find the best subject for your research.
    TIP: Use the Search Options in PsycInfo to focus your search on empirical studies, literature reviews, journal articles, english language material, or other resource types.
  • Note that books may also have great overview information and that many of the same search words that work in BSC may work in your search for books in the SFU Library catalogue.
    TRY IT! search the Library Catalogue for the Subject: Consumers - Attitudes and Limit the search to those items which have the word ethic* in their subjects. 

4.  Designing your research experiment

Once you have reviewed the scholarly literature on your general topic, you can narrow your research to a specific area, try to come up with an hypothesis, and design a study that will test this hypothesis.  For example, after doing some initial research into factors that influence the success of new product introductions, you may decide that you want to investigate how consumers evaluate products that are completely new to them (as opposed to being just improvements on existing products).

All of the research that you've done thus far on the broader topic will help you decide how to design your experiment and will form part of your literature review. It is a good idea to analyze this narrower topic much as you did the broad topic at the beginning.  That is, you should spend some time thinking of possible concepts and synonyms and of sub-questions and sources. Now that you have narrowed your focus, you may have to re-start your literature review using these new concepts, synonyms, and questions.

Some of the questions that you could be trying to answer at this point in your research include:

  • What problems have other researchers encountered with similar studies in the past, and how have they dealt with these problems?
     
    TRY IT! Find the article "The Effect of the Degree of Newness of a 'Really New' Product on Consumers' Judgments" using Business Source Complete. What aspects of this article might be useful in designing and interpreting the results of your own survey on the topic discussed above?  What aspects might be irrelevant?  Aside from its relevance, do you think the research discussed in this article is of good quality?
  • What questions have been asked on other marketing surveys that could be re-used for this topic?
     
    TRY IT! Look in the "Marketing Scales Handbooks" [print or online] to see if there are any relevant scales/questions for your topic.
  • Other questions?  What else do you think you would need to know to plan this study?

Aside from your textbook, some sources that might help you design your study can be found in the Library Catalogue using such subjects as Social sciences - Research - Methodology, Marketing research - Methodology, Business -- Research -- Methodology, Management -- Research -- Methodology, and the subjects related to Marketing -- Research.

5. Writing your report

For examples of reports and directions on how to put together a concise marketing report, start with some of the following sources.

Citing information sources

You also need to correctly cite all of the books, journal articles, and sites that you used in your research. Start with the SFU Library guide to APA Style. Use our guide to APA for Business Sources if your sources include some of our odder financial or marketing databases. 

There are a growing number of guides to citing electronic or Internet sources. Concordia University Library's Citation & Style Guides includes links to APA, MLA, Turabian, ISO, and other standard citation style guides.  The APA offers a bit of online guidance for those citing electronic materials in APA format at their APAStyle page. Some of our article indexes (e.g., Business Source Complete and CBCA) have information within their Help pages on how to cite articles found in databases using common formats such as APA, MLA, and Chicago.

NOTE: Citation or reference management tools collect your journal article, book, or other document citations together in one place, and help you create properly formatted bibliographies in almost any style — in seconds. Citation management tools help you keep track of your sources while you work and store your references for future use and reuse.

Learning how to properly credit others when you use their ideas is a dfficult, but important part of research. Start with the SFU Library's interactive tutorial "Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism" to test yourself and to learn more about plagiarism. Also read the SFU Library Guide on Plagiarism for further discussion of this critical topic and for links to other plagiarism guides.

6. Other guides to consult