You can find an amazing wealth of market data on the Web. The hard part, of course, is sorting through it all and knowing what to stress. As the Internet explosion increases, the hardest part about gathering market data is digesting all that's available.
Internet-Specific Data
General Market Data for the United States
- The U.S. Census Cendata page has a menu of available reports that include reports on different manufacturing industries and county-specific economic surveys, and others. You can even get 1995 business patterns for a specific zip code. Each of those includes detailed numbers and sizes of business of every type.
- Lately when I'm looking for market data my first stop is the Dow Jones Business Directory. If you're looking at one of the industries that this directory includes, you're in luck. It will give you excellent information on that industry, including good listings of websites for companies, associations, and publications.
- The IMarketInc site offers very good industry data reports by sorted by SIC code, with a powerful SIC code searcher as well. Even the free data reports are excellent. You do have to register with an email and password before you get the industry data, but it's a free registration. The industry-specific (based on SIC code) reports tell you how many companies there are, average sales, and employees. There are also useful breakdowns by size of company and location.
- CEOExpress has an excellent compilation of additional sites you might try.
Market Statistics for Other Countries
Demographic and economic statistics are becoming more available throughout the world, as the power of the web spreads. If you're working on market data for your own country, please don't assume you can't get statistics where you are. Check with your local business development agencies, business schools, and industry trade associations for help in finding the information you need. Here are some web links that might help as well:
Although you should always check locally first, there are some U.S.-oriented sites that offer data for other countries and other markets.
