Marketing: Start Here

This guide will help you find resources for marketing research.

Market Research Glossary of Terms

The Department of Business, Accounting & Finance is located in Room A-306C. You can contact them at (201) 447-7214.

Welcome

In order to build a successful marketing plan, you must be able to locate all the essential information. This guide is designed as a starting point for doing marketing research for your assignments and projects. This guide provides a listing of some of the best books, articles, databases, and websites for marketing research. It will help you to locate various sources of secondary information about prospective buyers, product markets, the industry, competitors, and costs.  Use the tabs to navigate through the guide and explore the suggested resources.

• • The Four P's - refresh your memory about the four P's, which are the basic building blocks of marketing.
• • Industry & Company information - search for industry overviews & profiles, and company overview & directory information. Knowledge of a company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, as well as financial data is important to your research assignment. Industry reports will also provide extremely useful facts such as industry performance, outlook, market shares, competitors, as well as significant factors influencing a specific product market.
• • Customer demographics - look for data on demographics and target markets
• • Articles - search for articles, business news, product announcements, forecasts, trends, statistics
• • Books & Media - check for books and media on marketing topics
• • Marketing plans - resources for creating a marketing plan
• • Citing sources - here's information on how to cite your sources
• • Internet - Internet - check for useful Websites related to marketing.

Where Do I Start?

Product Information

Scan recent articles in the library databases and online for product information, performance, and marketing ideas. Some starting points are Business Source Elite, ABI/INFORM, Lexis-Nexis Academic as well as some of the marketing websites listed on the Internet page of this guide.

Environmental Scan

Use the resources listed on the Industry & Company Information to find out what is going on in the industry such as conditions, outlook, competitors, competitive landscape, demand determinants,, as well as its characteristics.

Price Points

Scan websites for items similar to the one you are researching to determine price point

This guide was created and edited by Professor Paula Williams.