If you already found a good report in Mintel, you may want to skip links in this box. If your market is not covered by Mintel (such as industrial products), then "gleaning" a little info from these sites can be useful. Warning: You can't get the full reports, so looking at these sites can be a little frustrating!
Although EMU does not have a subscription for reports from the firms listed below, you can sometimes gather useful info on market research firm sites. Sometimes press releases or report brochures/summaries offer trend info or key data, such as market size. Browsing a report table of contents can give you ideas on competitors, global issues, and new products, or other aspects of the market that merit further investigation via article research or other sources.
This link takes you to another research guide with more sources for doing market research.
Market Research Firms
Advantages?
Disadvantage?
Market research firms usually specialize in covering specific industry types, so sometimes you need to go to a specific firm to find relevant reports. Mintel is excellent for consumer products, Frost and Sullivan is better for high tech and industrial products, Forrester specializes in tech industries, SBRN specializes in sports related markets, Euromonitor is better than other firms at covering markets in developing countries, etc. Unfortunately, EMU does not have a subscription to products from all of these firms.