Simmons Insights

MRI-Simmons Insights is a very powerful and unique database.  

Unlike many library databases, it contains no articles or textual analysis -- Simmons contains nationally-representative consumer survey data.  The survey asks questions about things like: 

• demographic, psychographic, geographic details
• media habits
• daily activity and attitudes
• brand and product preferences about nearly every product imaginable. 

Because it has no textual analysis, when you get into the data, you are looking at the raw questions and answers from the survey. 

The data are collected from the National Consumer Study and National Hispanic Consumer Study annual surveys.

They survey about 23,000 people, adults ages 18+ living in the contiguous 48 U.S. states. They have been doing this survey for 50+ years.

Some usability limitations to know:

Our data package is 2-3 years out of date, to control costs. In some areas of the economy, this makes the data less useful. But for many areas, the data has not drastically changed; and you can still use our data package to learn how to run searches and interpret the data. Because Simmons is a standard tool used in the marketing industry, it's a very good tool to have some familiarity with when you are looking for marketing and advertising jobs!

Our subscription also is available only for 25 users at a time -- if you get a message that the 25 spots are all taken, try again in a few minutes.

Log out when you are done, to free up your seat for someone else!

In the top right corner: 

View the helpful directions and screenshots on the tabs of this guide. 

If you need more assistance, do not hesitate to contact me using the box at the right!

Or, try the interactive tutorials below. 

Interactive tutorials for Simmons: Setting up your query

and for Simmons: Understanding your results.