Kresge Research Guides: ES 212 Entrepreneurial Business Basics: Consumer Research

Sage Research Methods

Sage Research Methods
Sage Research Methods supports research at all levels by providing material to guide you through every step of the research process. Use their Business and Management focused module to learn more about data analysis, quantitative methods, qualitative methods, and research design.
Sage Research Methods includes over 2000 books, reference books, journal articles, videos, data sets and cases on all aspects of social science research methodology. Browse the methods map or the list of methods to identify a social science methodology to pursue further. Includes a project planning tool and a tool to identify the best statistical method for your project. Includes the notable "little green book" series (Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences) and the "little blue book" series (Qualitative Research Methods).

You can access the Sage Business collection from the Sage Research Methods database. Sage Business includes business-specific research methods and frameworks, business foundational theories and data analysis tools, and a set of business reference materials. The collection also includes searchable cases, including those focused on Entrepreneurship, Marketing and some focused specifically on research methods for business and management. To access Sage Business from the Research Methods database, click on the Business tab at the top of the database home page.

Consumer & Demographics Databases

Mintel
Mintel provides marketing intelligence for a wide scope of industries in the US and abroad. Their reports are downloadable and contain market, consumer and brand/company information. Their databooks allow users to create graphs and tables using the marketing data that they collect.
Euromonitor Passport
This database contains data and insight on industries, economies, and consumers worldwide. Coverage includes consumer products, markets, and services. Statistics include product market size, company market share, brand shares, distribution, product ingredients, and packaging. Consumer behavior and economic factors are analyzed to identify future trends. Euromonitor Passport also has country profiles with economic, political, and geographic information.
Technical notes: Users may create a personal account to save results and research, create Alerts and get RSS feeds.

Use policy: When using material from this database in reports and presentations, vendor contract requirements dictate that you must include the phrase, "Used with permission of Euromonitor International."
Video tutorials:
- Euromonitor International YouTube Channel
Statista
Statista includes ready-made statistical charts, graphs and tables on marketing, demographics, communication, technology, politics, health, leisure and public opinion polls.

Customer Discovery - resources and readings

The Ultimate Guide to B2B Market Research
From Qualtrics

Customer Discovery Primer

Part of the startups.co Education Series, Steve Blank offers this customer discovery primer
Get out of your comfort zone to understand your customer

NYU's Entrepreneurs Blog offers tips and commentary from faculty and other entrepreneurs
What is customer development?

The author of The Lean Entrepreneur's blog offers this overview of the Customer Development framework, from Steve Blank
How to do market research - the basics

From Entrepreneur.com's Coaching Series, with links to related articles on primary research, researching your market, surveys and more
Successful entrepreneurial market research techniques

From The Kauffman Foundation's resource site for entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship.org
Financial models for underachievers: Two years of the real numbers at a startup

From Guy Kawasaki's blog, advice and lessons learned from an entrepreneur at Redfin