MKT 425 (Professor Elmer) Consulting Project Research Guide

5 C's Customer analysis engages in customer environment analysis - who, why, what, when, and where: 

Some questions to investigate: 

• Who are the client's Current and Potential Customers?
• What do Customers do with the client's Products?
• Where do Customers Purchase the client's Products?
• When do Customers Purchase the client's Products?
• Why (and How) do Customers Select the client's Products?
• Why do Potential Customers not Purchase the client's Products?

The potential market can be further analyzed through understanding the Buyer Persona (who, what, why, when) and finding where the market is through market segmentation, target market selection, and product and service positing. The market may be further segmented through demographics, psychographics, geography, and other distinguishing factors.

"Segmentation tells you where the Persona presents; Buyer Persona tells you how to influence a decision." (Adele Revella, the founder of Buyer Persona Institute)

Buyer Persona Infographic: How to Create Insightful and Actionable Buyer Personas (Buyer Persona Institute)

Mind the GAP: Using Buyer Insights to Drive Product Development, Design Market Strategy, and Develop Sales Plays (Buyer Persona Institute)

Christensen, C. M., Hall, T., Dillon, K., & Duncan, D. S. (2016). Know Your Customers’ “Jobs to Be Done”. (cover story). Harvard Business Review, 94(9), 54–60.

• Sales team, product/marketing team, customer support team, etc.
• Interview real buyers: buyers who recently evaluated your client's solution or the competitors’, etc.
• Customer surveys, social media, web analytics, customer reviews of clients or competitor products, etc.
• Analyst Reports (often needs to pay; some are available through a library subscription, such as Mintel Academic) can be used to understand who are your customers, what they buy, when they buy, and why they buy.
• Surveys or market research done by trade associations, marketing firms, etc. Many excerpts can be found via an online search, the RKMA market research handbook aggregated many of them.
• Demographic Statistics from the census bureau and Psychographic Mapping Tools can be used to identify where the customers are.
• Directory Databases (such as Reference Solutions) can be used to identify where customers are based on geographic, demographic, and psychographic features and can be used to generate business leads in some cases. 

Why Use Mintel: Mintel's reports are based on primary consumer surveys and will help you understand buyers' behavior, consumer attitudes, habits, preferences, motives, and how they make buying decisions for major consumer goods categories and their market segments.

How to Use Mintel: To efficiently search Mintel, change all content types to Reports and change the view to List view. It shows all the reports we subscribe to and have access to. Then narrow the results by category, trend driver or demographics, or by search. Select and download the full report. Infographics or slides can be used for presentation.

RKMA Market Research Handbook Series

Why Use RKMA: RKMA contains aggregated consumer market research and data on consumer behavior, and consumer marketing, it will help you understand and segment the market and identify effective marketing approaches and strategies. 

• Business-to-Business Marketing 2025
• Consumer Behavior 2025
• Consumer Marketing & Advertising 2025
• Consumer Use Of The Internet & Mobile 2025
• Entertainment & Leisure Market Research 2025
• Restaurant, Food & Beverage Market Research 2025
• Retail & E-Commerce Market Research 2025
• Sports Marketing 2025
• Travel & Tourism Market Research 2025
• U.S. Cities & Communities 2025

• American Community Survey Narrative Profile

Narrative Profiles are short, analytic reports derived from the ACS 5-year estimates. Each Narrative Profile covers 15 different topic areas and provides text and bar charts to display highlights of selected social, economic, housing and demographic estimates for a selected geographic area.

ESRI Tapestry Segmentation
Example Segments for:

• 1A Top Tier
• 1B Professional Pride
• 1D Savvy Suburbanites
• 2D Enterprising Professionals
• 8A City Lights

Reference Solutions (formerly ReferenceUSA): Search millions of private and public businesses for information on the competition, business demographics, and target markets. Reference Solutions step-by-step guides, webinars, and training materials are available to help you better understand how to use the search features and produce a strategy at home, on the go, or at the Library.

Ask the librarian to get the group access card or Get A Chester County Library Card of your own.

Reference Solutions Consumer Lifestyle Heat Map Example for Do-it-yourselfers in Chester County: