Market reports

Market reports are reports and statistics put together by specialist market research companies, such as Mintel, or found in commercial publications. You buy them rather than collect the data yourself, so they are a secondary research source.

Why they are useful

Research companies employ analysts who survey thousands of customers and study a whole industry before writing a report. That gives you precise and comprehensive data — market size, growth over recent years, competitor shares and customer segments, all in one place. You could not collect figures on that scale yourself with a small budget.

Providers also regularly update their reports, often bringing out a new edition each year. A report bought today reflects recent spending habits rather than sales patterns from a decade ago, so the information is current and safer to base decisions on.

Why they can let you down

The biggest drawback is cost. Reports are sold for high fees, sometimes hundreds or thousands of pounds for a single title. For a start-up with a few thousand pounds of savings, one report could swallow most of the marketing budget before anything is spent on advertising.

Reports are also broad, because they are written to suit a wide range of enterprises rather than one business. Imagine a report on the UK pet care market: it covers food, insurance and grooming together. A mobile groomer wanting to know how much households in one town would pay for a monthly grooming subscription will not find that answer, because the report was never written with her question in mind. The data may be detailed and up to date, but it may not settle the exact decision you are facing.