Business Research: statistics, data and trends

Are you looking for specific statistics on a particular market or population? Or are you looking for trends in an industry? Here are key sources and things to look out for.

What is the difference?
The terms statistics and data are often used interchangeably. However, there is a difference between these two terms.
Think of data as the raw/unprocessed numbers or as a set of collected information. You can think of numbers of registered members of a football club or visitor numbers at a pop concert.

Statistics refer to how the data has been interpreted and summarised; the meaning given to the data, for example presented in graphs or tables or expressed as averages or percentages.

(Many websites provide not only the data, but also the statistics).

In the case of trends, you look at longer-term developments (in a market).

Suppose you are searching for trends in the Dutch clothing market in recent years, but you find information about the German second-hand clothing market via Google in an article from 2015.... Does this article then help answer your question?
It is quite difficult to determine whether an article is relevant or not.

Things to look out for:
- Is the sector similar to the one you are looking at (clothing market vs second-hand clothing market)?
- Is the region comparable to the region you are looking in (Netherlands vs Germany)?
- is the age of the article recent enough (now vs 2015)?
- is the information reliable enough to use? (databases vs Google)

'Similar' and 'recent' are of course subjective terms. In fact, it very much depends on the sector/region/age and your assignment (and teacher). If a market has changed a lot in recent years, you would prefer more recent information than, say, 2015. Especially if both the sector, region and age are not a good match for your assignment, then an article is probably not worthwhile. If you are in doubt about this, contact your tutor.

Even when searching for statistics, data or trends, it is important to remain critical what the source behind the information is. Is the information coming from a company, put at the top by Google as an advertisement? Will that information be neutrally worded or are they steering you in a certain direction? In the databases/sources below, the information is neutral and reliable.
Can't find the information in those sources? There are many more websites with information, but be extra critical of the source. A good place to check: Does the country you are looking for information about have a national statistics website (like CBS/Statline in the Netherlands)? To find this, you can Google "national statistics [country you are curious about]".

Indicators are also often used in marketing research. Indicators are standardised ways of expressing something.

In the Business sector, many Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are used. Well-known marketing KPIs include

- Return on Investment (ROI) or
- Lifetime Value of a Customer (LTV).


 

Statistics, data & trends

Relevance

Reliability

Indicators

Databases

Interesting websites