University of Pittsburgh Library System

Get Help at the Library

The Business Research Clinic is one-on-one confidential business research assistance to help entrepreneurs gather information about their customers, competition, and industry to better understand the opportunities and limitations of their business idea. The BRC can help you:

• Map out competitors, partners, and suppliers
• Gather consumer demographics
• Track trends, attitudes, and behaviors
• Determine market size, demand, and/or market segments
• Identify industry opportunities, challenges, and outlook

The Business Research Clinic is free of charge and open to Pitt affiliates and the public.

Schedule a research consultation at: https://pitt.libcal.com/appointments/pittbizresearchclinic

Market Research

Market research is an organized effort to gather information about target markets, customers, and competitors. It is an important component of your business strategy because it can help you understand the existing competitive landscape and the overall health of the market to which you bring your product. For those who are commercializing an invention, product or service, market research can also help identify key stakeholders, major businesses for potential licensing, and customer channels.

There are two main types of Market Research:

• Primary market research is research conducted and collected by you. This can be in the form of interviews, surveys, focus groups and other ways of collecting customer feedback. Your main objective is to understand the needs of your target customers and the important stakeholders and possible gaps of the market.
• Secondary market research consists of reports, datasets, articles, and other resources that have been produced by industry stakeholders, analysts, and other researchers. Secondary resources can help validate what you learn about your industry, customer, and competition from your own primary research.

Additional Library Resources

The library provides several specialized databases to aid in conducting industry, company, consumer, and market research. Visit a guide below for more information or contact the library specialist.

• Entrepreneurship Resources @ Pitt - https://pitt.libguides.com/innovation
• Resources for Community Entrepreneurs - https://pitt.libguides.com/PAbusiness