1. Business Research @ Your Library Amy J. Lee Business Resource Coordinator Canton Public Library

2. What Is Your Target Market? Identify Your Industry Identify Your Competitors Identify Your Competitor’s Customers Identify a Site For Your Business

3. Identify Your Industry Use Reference USA’s Custom Search to look for the NAICS code (North American Industry Classification System) in your industry or go to http://www.census.gov/eos/www/naics/http://www.census.gov/eos/www/naics/ Having trouble finding your code? Look up the name of a known competitor.

4. Identify Your Competitors After identifying your industry, identify the competition in your area

5. Identify the Location of Your Competitors

6. Locating Competitors Use the geography field to target cities, zip codes or metro areas

7. Locating Competitors Use the mapping option to search by zip code

8. Locating Competitors Use the ‘Define Radius’ option to search a target area

9. Competitor Characteristics target companies Identifying an industry and location will provide a list of target companies

10. Competitor Characteristics Things to look for: Location Business Size Sales Volume

11. Competitor Characteristics Locate key info here!

12. Competitor Demographics

13. Competitor’s Customers Information Needed: – What type of people are they trying to attract? – Hobbies, spending habits, etc. – Overall lifestyle traits – Other psychographics

14. Psychographics Psychographics are characteristics about groups of people, including their consumer lifestyle, specifically for market research.

15. Psychographic Characteristics Use Demographic Detail Comparison information to look at Census information and compare different geographies.

16. Mosaic Information Use the Mosaic Population Comparison to view the most common ‘Mosaic’ types in DemographicsNow

17. Mosaic Example Mosaic is a consumer segmentation tool that describes American Consumers. It is a household-based segmentation system that classifies all U.S. households and neighborhoods in 71 Unique Mosaic types and 12 groupings that share similar demographic and socioeconomic characteristics.

18. Choose ‘Create Custom Locations(s)’ from the drop down menu under the Demographics tab. Site Prospecting

19. Add points by typing in addresses of potential locations

20. Use the Comparison menu to choose information regarding several categories of statistics and demographics

21. Retail Sales Potential Comparison is a helpful category for site comparison

22. DemographicsNow will give demographic comparisons of specified categories for 1,3, and 5 mile ranges from the chosen points (you can also choose drive times).

23. Map the variables by choosing the Maps tab

24. Choose the desired variables

25. Choose the ‘Thematic Layer’ option to view the map with a color key