Research Guides: Management: Consumer/Market Information

Suggested Resources for Consumer and Demographic Information

U.S. Census Bureau
Provides access to a wealth of population, housing, economic, and geographic data. Select “Advanced Search” to browse data by topic, geography, date, and survey type
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Data includes employment and unemployment, payroll, consumer price index, and producer price index. Keyword searching is available via the search bar in the top right corner of the page

American Time Use Survey (BLS)
Measures the amount of time people spend doing various activities, such as paid work; childcare; volunteering; and socializing
Consumer Expenditure Survey (BLS)
The consumer expenditure survey provides information on the buying habits of American consumers, including data on their expenditures, income, and consumer unit (families and single consumers) characteristics
Wages by Area and Location (BLS)
Wage and occupation data at national, regional, state, and metropolitan area levels

CIA World Factbook
Provides basic intelligence on the history, people, government, economy, energy, geography, environment, communications, transportation, military, terrorism, and transnational issues for 266 world entities. This resource will be useful if the business you are researching is international or serves international markets
Google Dataset Search
Searches for data in repositories across the web. Make sure you check that the data is coming from a reputable source (look for .gov and .edu web addresses)
Surveys of Consumers from University of Michigan
This site contains links to data and surveys on consumer sentiment, attitudes, behavior, spending, and expenditures

ICPSR (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research) This link opens in a new window
Contains social science research data files for use with statistical software, such as SAS or SPSS. Users must create an individual account to access data. Getting Started Using ICPSR (WKU Guide)