Customer segment
Customer segment
The customer segments are the different types of people or organizations that need your product or service. They can be grouped by common attributes based on levels of profitability, how they are reached, why they need your product/ service, or demographic and psychographic characteristics to name a few.
Consumer oriented
Products or services oriented to individuals will find consumer surveys and demographic data useful for customer segmentation.
- DemographicsNow (1980-) This link opens in a new windowRobust and highly-detailed demographic data. Ideal for gaining consumer and market insight as you consider opening a business, finding an untapped audience for your products, analyzing the shifts and needs of a given population, and more. Reporting capability allows you to rapidly produce a variety of compiled reports to help you make informed and accurate decisions.
- Mintel Reports This link opens in a new windowUse this resource to find market research reports for a number of industries. The information in the reports is a mix of primary data collected by Mintel together with secondary source information.
- Roper Center This link opens in a new windowThe Roper Center for Public Opinion Research is one of the world's leading archives of social science data, specializing in data from public opinion surveys. The Center's mission is to collect, preserve, and disseminate public opinion data; to serve as a resource to help improve the practice of survey research; and to broaden the understanding of public opinion through the use of survey data in the United States and abroad. Founded in 1947, the Roper Center holds polling data ranging from the 1930s, when survey research was in its infancy, to the present. Its collection now includes over 22,000 datasets and adds hundreds more each year. In total, the archive contains responses from millions of individuals on a vast range of topics.
- Statista This link opens in a new windowPortal for business and industry, government, and demographic statistics that integrates thousands of diverse topics of data and facts from some 18,000+ public and commercial sources onto a single, easy-to-search platform. Geographic coverage is worldwide, with particular emphasis on the United States, China, and European Union countries. Categorized into market sectors, Statista provides access to qualitative facts on agriculture, economics, finance, information technology, politics and society, and much more.
Business to business
When the intended end customer is another business, gathering intelligence on individual potential customers/decision makers and trends in the marketplace will be needed. Company directories & profiles, industry and market research reports and data gleaned from trade publications and trade associations will be needed.
The most efficient databases for finding large publicly traded firms are different from the ones you might use to find technology startups or mom and pops. Likewise industry and market research databases can be specialized by sector.
See these lists of company and industry report databases for Industry & Market Research Reports and Company Profiles.
MIT Sloan School of Management - LearningEdge
Launched in January 2009 under the name MIT Sloan Teaching Innovation Resources or MSTIR, LearningEdge is a collection of teaching case studies and management flight simulations developed by MIT Sloan faculty and students. All the materials featured on this site carry a creative commons license allowing them to be downloaded, copied, and distributed free of charge by anyone worldwide. Although the LearningEdge collection covers a wide array of industries, companies, and organizations, it focuses on areas in which MIT Sloan’s innovative research and teaching are on the cutting edge, including entrepreneurship, leadership and ethics, operations management, strategy, sustainability, and system dynamics.
- Business Source Complete (1965-) This link opens in a new windowFull text articles from scholarly business journals and other sources, including financial data, books, monographs, major reference works, conference proceedings, case studies, investment research reports, industry reports, market research reports, country reports, company profiles, SWOT analyses and more. Updated daily. Learn more about this database
- Mintel Reports This link opens in a new windowUse this resource to find market research reports for a number of industries. The information in the reports is a mix of primary data collected by Mintel together with secondary source information.
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