Research Guides: Entrepreneurship & Business Planning: Consumers & Products

Finding Market Fit

One of the hardest parts of creating a new product or service is determining who will use it. You might think single young adults would be interested but what if you should actually be looking at teenagers or young families? Or what if your product is missing a key feature, which means that no one will want it? In this video, Alan Chiu of XSeed Capital discusses how to make sure your product fits your market.

Consumers & Markets

General business databases such as ABI/Inform, Business Source Premier, and Lexis Nexis Academic are good sources for articles that provide demographic trends, consumer research, etc.

Mintel academic This link opens in a new window
Publishes research covering European, UK, and US consumer market issues like market drivers, sizes and trends, market segmentation, along with consumer attitudes and purchasing habits. Complex demographic issues are broken into easy-to-understand sections, explaining consumer behavior and demonstrating the structure of the market.
Statista This link opens in a new window
A statistics portal that integrates data on over 80,000 topics from over 18,000 sources onto a single professional platform - categorized into 170 multidisciplinary categories, providing direct access to quantitative data on media, business, sports, politics, and a variety of other areas of interest.
Passport This link opens in a new window
Data & reports on country, industry, company and consumer intelligence, includes internationally comparable market statistics on industries, countries and consumer; full text market reports, company reports and country reports; expert analyst comments on emerging industry trends, country trends and consumer trends.
Catalyst (MRI-Simmons) This link opens in a new window
Replaces Simmons OneView June 2019
Simmons Insights is the new consumer research platform replacing the OneView interface. Insights allows researchers to examine the same consumer demographics, psychographics, shopping behaviors, brand usage, and media consumption using Simmons datasets to test their scenarios. Includes NHCS Adult, Connect, New Media NHCS, and SimmonsLOCAL studies.

Simmons Catalyst User Guide [pdf]

Sports business research network; SBRnet This link opens in a new window
Provides market research data and industry news including sports equipment sales, sports participation, consumer expenditures, sponsorship, sports facilities, and more for both professional and amateur athletics

For more marketing resources and research tips, check out the Marketing Research guide:

Marketing
by Genifer Snipes Last Updated Oct 1, 2024 1369 views this year

Survey & Research Development

UO Qualtrics
UO students, faculty, and staff have access to QualtricsXM, one of the leading platforms for survey and form-based research projects. This tool is certified by the UO for research data security.

Learning Resources

Qualtrics Support & Training
Use these resources to learn about survey design, data collection, and analysis in Qualtrics.
The Essential Guide to Writing Effective Survey Questions - UX Booth
Great survey questions: How to write them & avoid common mistakes - QualtricsXM
Writing Survey Questions - Pew Research Center
This article is a description of Pew's internal survey development process rather than a "how-to," but it provides excellent guidance into the process of one of the world's top research groups.

Qualitative Research in Business by H. Alf Walle
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 1443866210
Publication Date: 2014
Offers analysis and "how to" guide regarding qualitative research methods for those seeking to apply these methods to their work.
Absolute Essentials of Marketing Research by Bonita M. Kolb
Call Number: ebook
ISBN: 9781000523300
Publication Date: 2022
This short textbook takes the student through the full market research process, from developing the hypothesis and setting the research question, to developing and conducting the research, and finally analysing the data and making recommendations.