Finding the Needle in the Haystack

Market Research

June / July 2004 By: Grace Brill Volume 2 Number 3

Print this Article

E-mail this Article

Information is the lifeblood of market research. Let's explore tactics for using secondary sources of information effectively.

First, let's tackle the Internet. Despite the web's unparalleled power to open up stores of previously inaccessible data, its utility is often compromised by the way people choose to use it. Ineffective search techniques leave many people floundering in a sea of irrelevant data. Worse, the tendency to rely on the Internet exclusively leads people to ignore useful data located elsewhere.

You should be aware that some of the most valuable content on the Internet resides within databases that are not accessed by standard search engines. Great sources like the SEC's database of financial filings, the Thomas Register of American Manufacturers, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office patent database can provide a wealth of useful data, yet you generally won't find items in these databases using your favorite search engine. It is beyond the scope of this column to list all databases relevant for market research, but here is one link that will allow you to locate a variety of these "invisible web" sources by topic:

www.invisible-web.net

Something else that stands in the way of locating relevant information is that the advanced search engine features that can help to focus search results often go unused. There are all sorts of techniques—€”from using exact phrases, to restricting your query to non-commercial sites, to limiting your search to a webpage's title, to searching only for specific file types­—€”that can help narrow search results. You will save valuable time by learning the advanced search options of whatever search engine you use.

Trade associations are one of the most useful, but often overlooked, sources of market research information. Many of these associations collect industry statistics—€”often at a fairly granular level of detail—€”that can be used to get a handle on market size or sales trends. If you don't see what you need on an association's website, it is always worth calling its library or statistical office to see if they can help. Even if they don't collect the data, they will often know if anyone else does. Trade groups may also provide a good overview of key regulatory or technical issues faced by the industry. Trade association staffers often have extensive industry experience, so they are prime candidates for interviewing if you need an in-depth assessment of industry trends. To locate relevant trade associations, most libraries will have the fairly comprehensive Encyclopedia of Associations; on the Internet try the directory provided by the American Society of Association Executives at:

http://info.asaenet.org/gateway/OnlineAssocSlist.html

Trade magazines are another source of specialized industry information. You should become familiar with the key trade journals of the industry you plan to sell into. There are several ways to access them. The easiest, of course is just to subscribe, but in some cases there are just too many journals or they are too expensive. Although many trade magazines have websites, they often provide only limited content to non-subscribers. If a local university or business library subscribes to relevant trade magazines it can be worthwhile sitting down with a stack of issues and just leafing through. This quick immersion technique has the added benefit of alerting you to data that you wouldn't get on a website, like competitors' advertisements or help-wanted ads. Trade magazines often publish directories of products or companies, and these can be extremely useful in identifying customers or competitors, mainly because, unlike more generic company directories, they are usually specialized enough to actually be useful.

One of the most efficient ways of accessing trade journals is by searching databases that consolidate information from a variety of these publications.
Let's say you wanted to know if anyone had published any projections on the overall size of the market for coronary catheters. There are so many journals that you would want to look through to find this information that the labor of searching through them manually would be daunting. However, by using an online database you could construct a fairly focused search (looking for variants of words in close proximity to each other) that would yield references to articles from a wide variety of journals, some that you probably didn't even know existed.

The catch is that these databases are usually too costly for you to subscribe to on your own. However, at least some of them may be available in university or public libraries.

It is important to be creative in how you look at information. Even sources that don't contain the exact piece of data you are looking for can provide insight worth following up on. Perhaps they point to relevant organizations, companies, people, or trends that you were unaware of. Sometimes the hints you find will suggest alternate ways of looking at a problem. For instance, perhaps while looking for information about regulatory issues in the industry you hope to sell to you come across references to rapidly increasing insurance costs. Don't leave this clue unexplored—€”contact the insurance companies that focus on this industry to see if you can get data substantiating that the liability of the sort that your product helps address is a "pain point" for the industry.

Grace Brill is Director of Market Research at Technology Ventures Corporation.