Local Market Information & Demand
After you research the consumer market for the industry you will want to adapt that data down to the local level to understand the industry and market in your local area.
The resources below can help you find information about your local market to combine with national consumer market trends.
- Use SimplyAnalytics to know how many people in your market area buy a product, belong to a certain demographic, and more.
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As an example, you could use SimplyAnalytics to find data by zip code on the percentage of people in Columbus, Ohio, who shop at Whole Foods.
- SimplyAnalytics
SimplyAnalytics provides demographic, business, or marketing data down to the local level, allowing users to create customized maps and reports with an almost unlimited number of variables. See my Tips & Tricks Guide for help with this database.
Get Tips & Tricks and Use SimplyAnalytics To:
- Rank geographic locations by consumer, demographic, or economic data
- Create a visual map of consumers in your target market area
- Find businesses and competitors in your geographic region
- Build data tables to compare multiple locations, including cities, states, and zip codes
- You will want to use census data to compare how your local market demographics align with the more general national demographics of a consumer market.
- Census data will have broad demographics such as age, gender, income range, education, etc.
- They don't measure things such as "who shops at Kroger." However, you can use the national data your learned about Kroger consumers (from Simmons or Mintel) and see if those demographic match your local population.
- Census QuickFacts
Provides easy access to some of the most-used economic and social statistics.
The QuickFacts are an easier way to get to census information than American Factfinder.
- Use Bizminer to better understand the health of your industry in the local region.
The video below shows one way to use Bizminer to better understand your local market competitors, demand, industry trends, and more.
- Use Mergent Intellect to identify and locate potential competitors in your industry.
- Is there room in the market for your new business?
- How are the other companies doing? (look at estimated sales)
- Mergent Intellect
Use to find companies and competitors by user-defined search criteria, such as size, location, industry, sales, and more. Useful for private company information which includes estimated sales.
Use Mergent Intellect for local consumer information
In addition to finding companies and competitors in your local market, use Mergent Intellect to:
- Find Consumer Data and profiles for a specific location
- Gather demographics of a city, county, state, or region
- Search by Resident to find information about specific people
Project 2 Resources: Tools for Local Market Analysis
This is a recording of the research session I gave to business students on October 21, 2019. I use Simmons Insight, SImplyAnaltyics, Mergent Intellect,and Bizminer to research the food stores industry. These essential tools can help you understand consumers, competitors, and industry vitality in a local market. In this demonstration, I use "health food stores" as my example . These databases are licensed to Ohio University for student and faculty use. If you are not affiliated with Ohio University, check with your university or library about access.