Research, Citation, & Class Guides: Management 489: Industry Info

Get to Know Your Industry

IBISWorld
Detailed industry market reports for 700+ areas of the U.S. economy. Each report contains statistics on the previous 5 years, future 5 years’ projections, analysts’ commentary, and risk ratings. Includes some state-level and global industry reports.

Finding Industry Research using IBIS World:

Statista
Statistics and other quantitative data on media, business, finance, politics, and a variety of other areas of interest.

If your company is focused on one specific geographic area, check the U.S. Census for demographic and business information about that area. You will need to make logical inferences about how the demographics of your area will affect how your business operates.

Think about things like:

What is the population, population density, and population breakdown (in terms of age, gender, household size) compared to the rest of the state or the U.S.? How does that affect your customer base?
What is the average income and poverty level? (including childhood poverty) How does that affect your customer base? If you have employees, how does that affect the competitive wages you must pay?
What is the average education level? How does that affect the competitive wages or the difficulty attracting workers?
What is the average cost for real estate (both individual and commercial)? (Use City Data for this.) If your business owns property, how does the cost affect you?

Census Data
This portal is best for accessing Census data on individuals and families living in a geographic area.
Census Business Builder
This portal is best for business characteristics (number, basic financials, etc.) for a particular area. Data is displayed in a map-based interface.
Use Regional Analyst Edition to view data for all sectors of the economy and for a user-defined region. This version supports chambers of commerce and regional planning staff who need a broad portrait of the people and businesses in their service area.

City Data.com
Offers a broad variety of information, from demographics to real estate data.

SIC/NAICS Codes

Many business reference sources such as company directories or industry analyses use the federal government's numerical codes (SIC or NAICS) to describe types of businesses. Use the links below to identify your code, and thus help identify who else is in your industry:

NAICS Codes
The North American Industrial Classification System -- the most updated system in the US to classify companies into different categories based on their product or service.
SIC structure
The Standard Industrial Codes structure. Technically, NAICS has replaced SIC, but SIC are sometimes still used too.
ISIC Codes
The PDF document from the United Nations, outlining the International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC codes).
NAICS/SIC Correspondence Tables
Concordance of NAICS publication structure and comparable SIC indexes