Statista: statistics, industry and market data

Statista (http://www.statista.com/) is a portal for statistics, market data, market research and survey results. It aggregates data on over 600 international industries from more than 18,000 sources, including market researchers, trade organizations, scientific journals, and government databases. You can get a rough idea of what the service covers from the list of topics at http://www.statista.com/topics/, although this does give the impression that it is heavily US biased, which is not the case.

Searching Statista is straightforward. The default is to include what it calls word fragments, so a search on the term bank will also find banking. This can be changed to identical words if you require an exact match. To search for phrases place double quote marks around your terms, and documents containing a specific term can be excluded by prefixing the word with an exclamation mark. You can 'OR' terms by inserting the vertical bar symbol (|) between them, for example dog | cat. To refine your search further use the options on the right hand side of the results page. These include date of publication, region, free/fee-based/all, and category.

Trying to view the data and charts that you find can be a frustrating process as most of the information is only available on subscription. There is a limited amount of free information but you still have to register for what Statista calls its basic free access. The premium account for an individual user is USD 49/month and runs for a minimum of 12 months. This is automatically renewed so make sure you cancel before the year is up if you no longer wish to use it. The corporate subscription is USD 199.90/month. Again the subscription runs for 12 months. A free trial is available for the corporate service but not for individual users. Prices for universities, libraries and education are available on request.

On the results page you can easily identify the subscription content by the red plus sign next to the chart icon to the left of the result. A red 'P' indicates a priced report that is free to corporate clients but can be purchased by basic and premium account holders.

Clicking on a result takes you to a page where the data is displayed as a chart or graph depending on what Statista thinks is the most appropriate for that statistic, but you can change the representation if you wish. There are also options for downloading the data in various formats and links to the original source.

Information is provided on the source and includes title of the original document, the publisher, publication date, time period covered by the survey and the geographical regions covered. Statista also adds notes such as definitions of terms used in the original report and observations on possible missing data.

Much of the information on Statista can be found by via Google or Bing using advanced search commands and options, but you will probably have to wade through a significant amount of irrelevant information before you find the data you need. Statista can certainly save you a considerable amount of time, and the data displays are a great way of helping you identify the potential usefulness of a report, as can the metadata and notes.

Is the subscription worth it? It is definitely cost effective for corporates in terms of saving search time and ensuring accuracy and quality of information. I have had good feedback about Statista from several of my clients. I am not so sure about individual users. Some of my own research is highly specialised and I am not convinced that Statista covers all of the areas of interest to me. It is difficult for me to assess its value without trialing the full service first, and there are no pay as you go options such as a day or weekly rate. I might even consider paying for a month's access for a project but it is a full year's subscription or nothing. Nevertheless, I recommend you take a serious look at it and if you are contemplating a corporate subscription you can ask for a free trial. It is now on my list of essential research tools.

Workshop: Statistics and Market Research

If you need to track down statistics and market research via the web I am running a hands-on workshop under the UKeiG banner in Newcastle on Wednesday 21st April. The venue is the Netskills Training Suite, University of Newcastle. Further details of the workshop and a booking form are available on the UKeiG web site at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/training/2010/StatsApril.html

Google compiles industry stats for the UK - sort of

Google has launched a new page that pulls together industry stats for the UK. Google - Internet Stats, which is biased towards information on electronic and online services and products, gathers data from third party vendors many of which are priced. A list is available at the bottom of the Internet Stats page. You can, though, submit your own "killer fact".  All submissions are vetted by Google.

There are five categories: Technology, Macro Economic Trends, Media Landscape, Media Consumption and  Consumer Trends. Each section has further sub-categories.

This is not the answer to a market/industry researcher's prayer. The number of statistics is very limited and the search option only searches within the browsable statistics on the landing page. Do not expect to be able to search for and find data on, for example, UK chocolate consumption! If your query falls within one of the listed categories you may be in luck.

Exactly where Google is going with this and why they have introduced it is not clear. This is a UK-only initiative at present and there is no link to it from either the .com or .co.uk main Google search pages. Neither is it listed in Google Labs. Even the official announcement on "Google Barometer: New! Internet Stats all in one place" gives very little further information.

TriMark Publications - Biotechnology, Healthcare and Life SciencesMarket Research

TriMark Publications focuses on market research in biotechnology, health care and the life sciences. You can browse reports or search by keyword. The market reports vary in price but there are detailed table of contents and the first three or four pages available free of charge as a sample. However, any figures or data on the pages are blacked out.  It is refreshing, though, to see a detailed listing of what is contained in the reports before you part with significant amounts of money.

Sector Snapshots cost just USD 500 and provide a high-level overview of a particular market sector, including key players, sales data and emerging trends.

Database Tables, costing USD 100 each, are a one-page table of hard-to-find numerical information. They are derived from "a proprietary source" and provide a high-level overview of specific data points in a table format. Database Tables are not reports or comprehensive analyses.

Research Recap

Alacra's Research Recap pulls together industry, economic, academic, market, investment and credit research reports. It concentrates on free content but also offers links to selected paid research deemed of relevance to the topic. Priced reports are sourced from a wide variety of providers, including the Alacra Store. Much of the paid research is usually password-protected and will not show up in a Google-type search, but Research Recap has made arrangements with providers to review their proprietary research to determine what is appropriate to highlight for Research Recap’s audience. Research Recap does not claim to be comprehensive and may not include items that are widely circulated elsewhere.

Research Recap is published in blog format and is also available as an RSS feed.

MarketResearch.com acquires Profound

MarketResearch.com has acquired the Thomson Business Intelligence (TBI) Market Research service, known as Profound. Thomson announced earlier this year that they wanted to sell Profound.

According to the press release "the acquisition expands MarketResearch.com’s international reach with additional content and sales presence in Europe and North America. Profound provides a closed-platform, market research service that complements MarketResearch.com’s open-format, web-based service." It will be interesting to see what pricing model they adopt for it and how, if at all, they integrate Profound with their existing service. MarketResearch.com bought rival company MindBranch in 2005 but the two sites remain. I suspect that, given the different type of users the services have, Profound will be marketed as a separate product.

The Viewing Facilities Association UK

The UK Viewing Facilities Association (http://www.viewing.org.uk/) is a trade association representing companies which have viewing studios and services available for hire to other market researchers, (as opposed to studios which are tied to particular research companies). It sets high standards for membership such as requiring members to meet certain levels of customer satisfaction, to be members of the MRS and work to the MRS code of conduct. They must also have completed fire risk and health and safety assessments. The site contains a directory of members and is searchable by location.

The Association for Qualitative Research

Alan Dickinson of Skill Zone pointed me in the direction of this site. I should declare an interest on behalf of Skill Zone in that they designed the site but what follows is my own independent assessment. If you don't want to read the full review my personal opinion is that this is a very good starting point for associations, contacts and practitioners in the field of qualitative and market research.

Founded in the early 1980s, the Association for Qualitative Research has over a thousand members. The web site includes a directory of qualitative research practitioners and suppliers of services. The Directory is available as a handbook published as an A5 format of 500 pages and is free to anyone on request (subject to availability). The published version of the directory includes a selection of articles, reference documents, and the AQR membership list.

There is also a section on useful contacts that lists professional associations, membership organisations and industry bodies focussing on particular aspects of research or services, both in the UK and overseas. The categories include market research, advertising organisations, marketing/direct mail and overseas associations. In addition, the site has a library of articles which are free to read, some short, some in-depth, and a glossary of terms used in market and qualitative research.

Overall, a very good starting point for market and qualitative research in terms of understanding the industry, terminology, identifying relevant organisations, and tracking down practitioners in the field. Definitely recommended.

Market Research on the Web - Special Offer

IRN Research are offering a special introductory annual subscription to their Market Research on the Web (MROW) database. The special offer is £100 and applies to single user corporate subscribers, academic and public library users. A free trial is available covering the food and drink sector.

MROW is a searchable database of sources of market data, industry reports, company lists, statistics, industry news, legislation, and links to over 4,500 evaluated UK and European Web sites. The sites are categorised by organisation type for example trade association, professional bodies, market research publishers, market research agencies, magazines/journals, Government sites, gateways/portals.

I have subscribed to this service since it was first launched and was a regular user when it was still free of charge. The main advantage of the service for me is that it saves me so much time when I am looking for industry statistics or directories of members/companies on trade and professional association web sites. I pride myself that my search skills can track down relevant sites without the help of MROW, but I then have to visit and navigate each site in turn. All too often I find that the site does not give stats on their sector or does not have a directory. MROW tells me straight away if there are stats or market data, if there is a directory of members/companies, availability of news and press releases, and if there is information on relevant legislation and technical data. MROW finds in a couple of minutes what would normally take me about half an hour to track down the Google et al way.

MROW also provides a Guide to Market Data and Statistics - a searchable database of statistical and market research terminologies, classifications, and concepts. This is a great resource for checking on market research jargon.

Market Research Society launches summer school

The UK Market Research Society has launched a new summer school called Research in Action. It will be held on 12-16 June 2006 at the Crown Plaza Hotel, Cambridge, UK.

The intensive, five-day residential course programme is designed to:

• deepen knowledge of research approaches and techniques


• build business awareness


• revitalise research skills


• challenge thinking


• open up new perspectives on the business of research

For more information and to book visit
http://www.mrs.org.uk/researchinaction/index.htm

Marketscan - Mailing Lists and Direct Mail Services

Marketscan offer direct mail services to businesses and individuals. The lists appear on first glance to be heavily UK biased but there are also International and European lists. You can browse and build lists via a number of different routes: business, consumer, company directors, market sectors, SIC codes, geographical planner. The business lists, for example, include New Connections, Job Function, Medical Data Set, IT Data Set and email lists. I found the market sectors approach far more flexible than SIC codes, which is the usual option offered by most other services. Building a list is straightforward and prices start at GBP 115 per 1000 records.

There is also a guide to direct mail marketing (http://www.marketscan.co.uk/direct_marketing_guide.asp) that can be viewed on site or downloaded as a PDF. The points and issues raised should be common sense to anyone experienced in direct marketing but it is all too easy to lose track of where you are in a campaign. For newcomers to direct marketing, this is an essential primer: for seasoned veterans it is a useful checklist and reminder.

Aroq - Industry and Market Research

Aroq

This is a gateway to Aroq's four industry specific sites: just-drinks.com, just-food.com, just- auto.com and just-style.com. All four pull together news and market research in their particular sector. The market research comes from a wide range of suppliers and can be purchased online. The news is free and each of the sites have excellent blogs commenting on events in their sector. RSS feeds of the news headlines and the blogs are available.