I recently successfully entered the university Business Plan Competition. it’s basically a contest for entrepreneurial types, with a cash reward even.
However, I need marketing data to plan things financially. And this is difficult. The people I want to question tend to be working people with families. They’re the ones who might order a a pizza and get a movie on Friday night and relax. I guess I can just make a mass-mailing somehow. BUt I don’t have too much time and I’m not sure what I ought to do.
you may not need to question people directly. it will be difficult, and perhaps not so accurate. you really need to know what you’re doing to do face-to-face market research. it’s just too easy to lead people into directions. Also people often don’t really think what they tell you, and moreover some people tell you what you think you want to hear. Instead, I would recommend using market segmentation and industry data. There are plenty of databases that your school might subscribe to. These are very good, they often cover very obscure areas of market data, and they have a wealth of information. Try them if you have access to them through your university library:
Business Source Elite
OneSource
Mintel
Standard & Poor’s Net Advantage
or these books:
Lifestyle Market Analyst
Market Share Reporter
Cagey’s absolutely right - unless the data you need is unbelievably obscure, it’s probably been collected by somebody somewhere. Doing it yourself is not for amateurs - it’s costly, time consuming, and takes a lot of knowledge and experience to design a good survey, put it in the field, and then clean and analyze the data. Even if you do it right, it’s a crapshoot whether you’ll end up with usable and valid numbers.
If you can’t find it in your school’s databases, I’ll bet some market research firm has got a report somewhere if you Google it. You may be able to beg the analyst for the information, or even - if you’re lucky - a copy of the report since you’re a student (a company would be paying big bucks) - make sure you offer to source them.
If you are an undergraduate consider contacting the business school graduate office at your University. Often graduate students have access to better research data, and a helpful student (or even professor) might be able to help you out.
It sounds like you might benefit from reviewing the DDB Needham Lifestyle Survey.
There are several ways to access it, but the easiest would probably be through your library. It contains all sorts of data about buying habits of various demographic groups.
There are places out there where you can do your own market research. Zoomerang.com is good (disclosure - I work for the company that owns Zoomerang). Surveymonkey is a competitor to Zoomerang if you wish to check that out.
If you go with Zoomerang, I’d be willing to help/advise for free any data/issues you have.
Your school also almost surely has access to LexisNexis with access to huge numbers of databases, trade journals, newspapers, etc. Often you will find data on there from sources like InfoBase, or you can just do searches in the general news section on whatever the marketing idea is you are pitching. Odds are, someone has thought of the same (or similar) ideas at some point in the past and they may boast about statistics (and where they pulled them from) in their press releases, what worked, what didn’t and what they are changing to make their product/service better.