Home - MKT 431 - Consumer Behavior - LibGuides at University of Rochester

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We’ve done our best to select the most pertinent materials for these Course Resources pages, but if these are not helping with your topic/project, we encourage you to use the Schedule an Appointment link in the Profile box on this page.

Resources for this class

Here are a few tips to for researching:

Google often isn't helpful. The best business information is not free. However, the library does subscribe to numerous resources.
When using these databases, adjust your search terms if you're not getting the results you hoped for--try synonyms and scour article titles, abstracts, and subject headings in your search results for likely search terms to use. Sometimes a thesaurus or encyclopedia come in handy when brainstorming search terms.
Use double quotes to search multiple words as a phrase (e.g. "new age" finds these terms in exact order).
Use an asterisk to substitute for letters at the end of a word (e.g. crit* finds critic, criticism, critique etc.).
If you can't find what you're looking for, schedule an appointment!

Let's start with some resources specifically on this topic of "consumer behavior" - these are all ebooks:

RKMA Market Research eHandbooks This link opens in a new window
This database is also listed on the Market/Industry research tab, but I had to repeat it here. Here you will find market research handbooks for Consumer Behavior, Consumer Marketing, and International Consumer Markets. Entire books in PDF format, full of stats, facts, and short essays. Worth a visit!
Collection includes market research handbooks covering US and international consumer markets; entertainment & media; healthcare business; restaurants, food & beverage; retail business; sports marketing; travel & tourism; and casinos, gaming & wagering.

Gender, Culture, and Consumer Behavior by Cele C. Otnes (Editor); Linda Tuncay Zayer (Editor)
ISBN: 9781848729469
Publication Date: 2012-03-21
Consumer Behavior by Patricia Huddleston
ISBN: 9781606491676
Publication Date: 2011-01-15
Laddering: Unlocking the Potential of Consumer Behavior by Eric V. Holtzclaw
ISBN: 9781118652978
Publication Date: 2013-06-27
Store Design and Visual Merchandising, Second Edition by Claus Ebster; Marion Garaus
ISBN: 9781631571138
Publication Date: 2015-03-05

List of all books and ebooks about Consumer Behavior available at UR
This link will run a search and auto-generate a list of books, ebooks, journals - everything and anything with 'Consumer Behavior' in the title, published from 2006 -- now.

And how about managing your consumer (customer) relationships?

Fuzzy Methods for Customer Relationship Management and Marketing : applications and classifications by Andreas Meier; Laurent Donzé
ISBN: 9781466600959
Publication Date: 2012-01-31

These are the best databases if your research is consumer or "daily life products" or even sports! -oriented:

Mintel Reports+Trends This link opens in a new window
In-depth market research & trends reports. Consumer products focus: brands/products, lifestyles, some finance & tech. US & Europe. The finance and culture & identity modules contain finance, sustainable consumer, and diversity, equity & inclusion reports. Each user must create a personal account using a UR email address.
Trends module adds analysis of consumer trends & how they align with business applications.
RKMA Market Research eHandbooks This link opens in a new window
Access to the complete collection of market research handbooks from RKMA; data goes to very granular levels.
Collection includes market research handbooks covering US and international consumer markets; entertainment & media; healthcare business; restaurants, food & beverage; retail business; sports marketing; travel & tourism; and casinos, gaming & wagering.
Simmons Insights This link opens in a new window
Includes consumer data on products, brand preference, attitudes and media including demographic and characteristics of customers of thousands of consumer items and media Access limited to 3 simultaneous users.
From off-campus, use VPN to avoid security certificate notices in connecting. Data is from 2015
Sport Business Research Network (SBRnet) This link opens in a new window
Market research and industry news for sports equipment sales, participation, consumer expenditures and facilities.

The following 3 databases are our best "all-around," full-spectrum-of-industries resources. If you're looking for industry reports for the US, China, or "Global" - IBISWorld is the place. If you need information for specific countries ("Beer in Ireland," for example) - MarketLine is the place. Just the United States - FirstResearch.

IBISWorld This link opens in a new window
Industry research reports; US & Global. Search by keyword or NAICS code. Market size, competitors, forecasts, valuation, & more. Includes Industry Wizard. The U.S. Spotlight Industry Report collection offers titles focused on ultra-niche industry categories that feature insights in condensed format focused on providing more charts, tables, and graphs
MarketLine GlobalData Intelligence Centers This link opens in a new window
This database provides access to Industry (reports by country), Company, and Country reports, plus Company News, Financial Deals, and Case Studies, Market size, segmentation, competition, and forecasts. MarketLine Explorer capitalizes on actionable intelligence spanning 22 global industries. Combining macroeconomic data and information on thousands of companies, Explorer offers detailed coverage of the global trends that are shaping industries, impacting companies, and driving innovation.
At the login screen, click on IP Access.
Additional modules within MarketLine:
Financial Deals Tracker: Track market activity with MarketLine's database of global mergers and acquisitions (M&A), private equity deals, venture finance deals, private placements, IPOs, and partnerships.
Company Prospector: Screen companies and build lists of potential business partners, clients, and investment targets in industries and countries of interest.
Investment & Advisory Prospector: Identify advisory & investment firms operating in specific industries, and gain insight into the investment and inorganic strategy of companies.
Company Report Generator: Generate fresh custom company reports featuring analytical text and charts which draw on MarketLine's company datasets. Example sections include company overview, history, SWOT analysis, M&A, partnerships and agreements, news and product information.
FirstResearch This link opens in a new window
Includes industry reports for consumer products, technology, and most U.S. industries.

The following databases are our best resources for hi-tech or medical/pharma market research:

Frost & Sullivan This link opens in a new window
Includes both technical reports and market analysis on emerging, high-tech and industrial markets in 50 countries.
Gartner This link opens in a new window
Contains reports on the IT industry and the impact of IT on businesses. Search by market, topic, or industry.

The following are additional possibilities; frankly, I don't find theses databases usually as good as the ones listed above, but wanted to give you as many options as possible:

Business Monitor International (BMI) Industry Reports This link opens in a new window
Includes regional SWOT analysis, market trends, and forecasts for global emerging markets.
Freedonia Industry Reports This link opens in a new window
Includes reports for consumer products, manufacturing, health care and more. Includes forecasts. U.S. focus, some global.

Articles are great places to look for information or reports of studies on consumer behavior. Here are some suggestions, in order from Most Scholarly to most popular/news items:

ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
Don't be put off by the "Science" in the name of this database: it has a very rich collection of business, marketing, and related journals. This represents "the most scientific/scholarly" research.
Includes the sciences, engineering, humanities, social sciences, and clinical medicine. Full text from 1995 on, except as indicated.
Business Source Premier This link opens in a new window
Contains articles, company and industry reports, marketing reports, and country reports. Includes Harvard Business Review.
ABI/INFORM Complete This link opens in a new window
Articles from academic business journals and business trade publications; plus industry reports, some market data, and company profiles from the Experian Commercial Risk database.
For alumni access, see link to Proquest Alumni Edition on the Alumni Library Gateway.
Factiva This link opens in a new window
Contains articles on business, news, and companies worldwide, current and historical financial quotes, and company profiles.

In case 'branding' or 'brands' ties into your consumer behavior research:

Ad $ Summary This link opens in a new window
Annual report telling how much companies spent on advertising by media channel; also by brand and media channel. PDF of book.

Romancing the Brand by Tim Halloran
ISBN: 9781118828960
Publication Date: 2014-01-06

Books on Branding (Marketing)
Generates an instant list of books and videos owned by the UR Libraries (They are all available online - no trip to the library necessary!).

Does this course call for hard-core number crunching? If so, you might want to take a look at the Survey of Consumer Attitudes and Behavior series homepage at ICPSR. The University of Rochester is a member of ICPSR, so you can create an account and download all the datasets you want. Just be ready, though: this is not Excel-land, you'll need to be ready to work with SAS, SPSS, Stata, or R, and really read the Codebook that goes with the data. If all this sounds like a foreign language to you, move on to the other resources on this page! ;)

Survey of Consumer Attitudes and Behavior

For quick numbers, especially on "hot" or "trendy" topics, try Statista:

Statista This link opens in a new window
A data aggregation platform with statistics, facts, and market data in a wide range of topic areas.
Downloadable in JPG, XLS, and PPTP.

For more traditional kinds of demographic or "business stats", try the following databases:

American FactFinder - from the US Census
Easy-to-use, great source for demographic data for the national down to the neighborhood block level.

ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the U.S. This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States.
ProQuest Statistical Insight This link opens in a new window
US and international statistics. Includes full text statistical tables and abstracts of additional statistical sources.
Covers material in American Statistics Index (ASI), Index to International Statistics (IIS) and Statistical Reference Index (SRI). Googling for material not in full text in the database works quite well.
County Business Patterns This link opens in a new window
Data on US businesses: number of establishments, employees, and payroll; from entire US to ZIP code level, by NAICS or SIC.
Data is annual; some series back to 1993 available online. NAICS and SIC are industry codes. Produced by the US Census Bureau.

More Sources for Business Statistics
For more resources, including sources of international and trade data, visit this page.

Business Expert Press This link opens in a new window
E-textbooks emphasizing real-world examples and applications. ~300 titles covering the gamut of business topics. Fully downloadable.

International Encyclopedia of Marketing by Jagdish Sheth (Editor-In-Chief)
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9781405161787
Publication Date: 2011-02-07
Excellent for authoritative background information on any aspect of marketing. Volume 1: Marketing Strategy Volume 2: Marketing Research Volume 3: Consumer Behavior Volume 4: Advertising and Integrated Communication Volume 5: Product Innovation and Management Volume 6: International Marketing
Gale Business Insights Handbook of Global Marketing by Gale Group (Editor)
ISBN: 1414499280
Publication Date: 2013-06-14
Gale Business Insights Handbook of Social Media Marketing by Gale Group (Editor)
ISBN: 1414499310
Publication Date: 2013-06-14

Other helpful resources

Advertising Research Foundation
Provides links to consumer trends and statistics. Click on the 'consumer' tab.
AdViews
AdViews is a digital archive of thousands of vintage television commercials dating from the 1950s to the 1980s.
American Consumer Credit Counseling
"A non-profit 501(c)(3) organization offering confidential credit management education and debt counseling to consumers nationwide."
American Customer Satisfaction Index
"ACSI reports scores on a 0-100 scale at the national level. It also produces indexes for 10 economic sectors, 45 industries (including e-commerce and e-business), and more than 225 companies and federal or local government agencies. The measured companies, industries, and sectors are broadly representative of the U.S. economy serving American households. "
Arbitron
"Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB) is a media and marketing research firm serving the media—radio, television, cable and out-of-home—as well as advertisers and advertising agencies. Arbitron’s core businesses are measuring network and local-market radio audiences across the United States; surveying the retail, media and product patterns of local market consumers; and providing application software used for analyzing media audience and marketing information data."
Association for Consumer Research
"The mission of the Association for Consumer Research is to advance consumer research and facilitate the exchange of scholarly information among members of academia, industry, and government worldwide. " See QuickLink Resource (For Researchers) for links to a variety of helpful resources.
Engage for Good (formerly Cause Marketing Forum)
Provides statistics related to Cause Marketing
Censusscope
Provides census data in different formats allowing the user to better visualize demographic information. These formats include charts, graphs and maps.
ClickZ--demographics
Provides statistics and demographics for interactive marketing
ERsys.com
Data for over 2600 US cities with detailed information on demographics, environmental factors, economic indicators, housing stats, media, schools, and transportation.
Forum for Family and Consumer Issues
"A refereed e-journal designed to integrate, apply and transmit knowledge about issues of current interest in Family and Consumer Sciences" from NC State University.
Nielsen NewsWire
Latest news from Nielsen.
Nielsen Reports
Check out ratings and rankings to learn what the public is watching, reading, playing, etc.
Pew Global Attitudes Project
Explore global public opinion trends in 55 countries on topics ranging from attitudes toward the U.S. to people's Explore global public opinion trends in 55 countries on topics ranging from attitudes toward the U.S. to people's assessments of their own lines to views about globalization, democratization, extremism and other important issues.
Pew Hispanic Center
Designed to improve understanding of the U.S. Hispanic population and to chronicle Latinos' growing impact on the nation. Areas reported on include: Demography,Economics,Education, Identity (attitudes), Immigration, Labor, Politics, and Remittances ($ sent home by immigrants)
Pew Research
"The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan "fact tank" that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It does not take positions on policy issues."
Nielsen Segment Explorer
An interactive tool that lets you examine segment groups based on demographics and behaviors. Full usage of this resource requires a paid subscription.
Secret History of the Credit Card (2004)
PBS/Frontline/New York Times documentary on Credit Cards
Surveys of Consumers
University of Michigan Index of consumers sentiment as well as surveys of investors, affluent consumers, and regional data.

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