AREC 315 - Agribusiness Economics and Management

These strategies and resources may help you answer the following questions for your marketing plan:

• Identify the key characteristics and needs of the target market(s). [Ch.8]
• How will your products be marketed? What is your marketing mix? [Ch.7]
• What resources will you need to market your products?
• What are the forecasted sales? [Ch.8]
• What marketing risks does your business face? What will you do to mitigate these risks?

When looking for research on consumers and the overall market for your business idea, consider these different approaches to developing keywords and phrases for your search:

• Consumer: try terms relating to the likely customer, whether that's their profession, lifestyle, habits, values, etc.
  • For example, when researching customers of an animal feed store, we might research farm, livestock, horse, or pet owners.
• Location: search for information on the people who live or work in the specific location or region where you intend to establish the business. Details like the population demographics and business counts can help build the story of this market.
• Product/service: try terms relating to the main products or services that your business will provide to find market research specific to those products/services. These will often feel similar to the terms you used when researching the industry, but this won't always be the case.
  • For example, for an animal feed store business, we might use terms relating to grain, pet food, pet supplies, or farm supplies

Types of resources to consider:

• Consumer surveys
• Market research reports
• Demographics data
• Business counts data

For developing your marketing strategies, check out the tools at the bottom of this page for marketing campaigns and advertising.

The examples below follow the search strategies outlined above. We will be looking for market and consumer research for feed stores in the United States and Arizona.

EX1: MarketResearch.com Academic. For our business, we will need to do a few different searches

Search A: Pet Food. This provides a report on the retail pet food market in the United States, but the focus is on dogs & cats, so we need to do another search to get information on livestock feed.

Search B: Livestock Feed. This provides two different reports. One that covers Poultry and Livestock, and one the covers Sheep and other Livestock

EX2: Bizminer: 

• Choose the Industry Market Profile Panel
  • Use the NAICS code (for the example it is 459910)
  • Market Area-  for our example area, we selected US to ensure we got enough companies in the report 
  • Select the Access Now button to review the report (click Access Now a second time to access the report)

These resources provide market research and survey data on consumer behavior and preferences, including demographics, lifestyles, opinions, shopping habits, and more. For surveys, pay attention to the source (who created, disseminated, and analyzed the survey), collection dates, sample size, and sample demographics (e.g., adults aged 18 to 24 in the United States, adults aged 18+ who own a car, etc.). Consider what kind of data you need. Some databases allow you to create tables (crosstabs) to better combine certain questions, answers, and demographics to tell a story.

For more database recommendations, refer to the Market and Consumer Research page of the Business research guide.