KCSourceLink Blog

Today we conclude our series with Ed Mertz, reference librarian at Mid-Continent Public Library, who talks about marketing research resources at the library. Today, Ed provides six solid sites for market research.

You know you need high-quality information to provide you insights into your market. Here are six reliable business research databases to help you make the most of your marketing efforts.

• The Safari Business Books database contains hundreds of e-books about business including many books on marketing. Most of these marketing books contain entire chapters on Marketing Research. And this database allows you to go directly to those chapters. DemographicsNow
• DemographicsNow gives you the ability to analyze the demographics and market potential of any geography in the U.S. Also it can create custom reports, perform quick market analysis, create fully interactive maps, and more.
• Entrepreneurship includes business information and multi-media useful to educators, researchers, students and members of the business community. It includes an “Industry and Market Research” section that provides research not only on specific industries, but different product types as well.
• Plunkett Research Online provides in-depth information on many industries. It includes market research, trends analysis, industry statistics, charts, profiles of industry-leading companies (public and private) and more. It even offers an easy way to create in-depth custom reports on specific industries.
• The subject guide option in the Small Business Resources Center database not only helps you find marketing research information, but is good at breaking down the topic into subdivisions or related subjects. The related topic Market Surveys being an example.
• We have other business databases that might help with your marketing research questions as well. Some of these databases are listed below.

Although it’s not categorized as a business resource, another of our databases that can be very useful is called WorldCat. It can be used for finding materials that are not included in the Mid-Continent Public Library system. However often we may be able to borrow materials outside of our library system thorough our Inter-library program.

Remember you can always call the Mid-Continent Public Library reference department for help, 816.252.0950.