Researching Your Customers

Researching Your Customers

Gathering market research data is a crucial step in the business planning process. Market research is used to determine consumer opinions, industry trends and competitor stats.  It is used to gauge consumer interest in new products and service offerings and to establish a list of prospective customers. There are a number of ways to go about collecting this data so GoForth will introduce you to one key method that all start-up ventures should make use of – Statistics Canada.

Statistics Canada

Statistics Canada has key socioeconomic information for Canada, and will help you find out average household spending per year on products and services like the one you’ll be offering.

Step 1:  Go to the Statistics Canada website. 

Step 2:  Enter the search terms for the data you’re looking to find. 

Step 3:  Table descriptions can help you find the most appropriate data. For example, if you’re interested in starting a travel agency, the table called “Tourism demand in Canada” will show you that travel agency services haven’t really been growing over the past few quarters – have your customers spoken?

Step 4:  You can tailor the data further by choosing the Add/remove reference period or Add/remove data links above the table. You can also choose Related information for further reading.

 

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