Business Owner's Manual

Researching your market

As in the domestic market, in order to sell your product, you have to find people who want to buy it. If want your business to have an active export program, you will want to have some idea where your product is likely to sell well, and how much it might sell. To do that, you will have to do market research. Market research can help you determine the largest or fastest growing markets for your product, and market trends, outlook, and practices in a particular place. Look at the Marketing Your Business section of the Business Owner's Manual for more information on how to effectively research and analyze your prospective market.

Resources

Market research on domestic markets can sometimes be difficult to find in a library. And marketing information about foreign countries is rarer still. The National Trade Data Bank, available at the Science, Industry and Business Library, is a unique and invaluable source of marketing information about foreign countries, and offers reports compiled largely by U.S. embassies and trade offices abroad. Much of this information is not available elsewhere.

Industry Sector Analysis (ISA) Reports

ISA Reports cover products or industries in a particular country. These reports are generally quite long (20 pages or more) and in depth. Such extensive information on a foreign market is usually available no where else. These reports are arranged primarily by date and are updated daily, but, as in all parts of the NTDB, you can do key word searches, which allows you to search by product or country or both.

International Market Insight (IMI) Reports

IMI Reports are also arranged by date (key word searches are possible), but are more eclectic, and generally much shorter. They offer brief (generally a few pages) reports on economic, social, and political climate and events in foreign countries, as well as short market research reports on particular products.

Market Research Reports (IMI & ISA Historical)

These are cumulative compilations by country of the IMI and ISA reports mentioned above.