Guides: MRKT 452: Consumer Behaviour: E-Commerce Assignment

1. Choose Your E-Commerce Firm

When choosing your e-commerce firm, you will need to find out that seeks to get at least part of its financial revenue from individual consumers. You can evaluate potential companies using Mergent Online or MarketLine to look up their profiles. Each database will provide more information on the types of products they offer and who their customers are.

Mergent Online
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Within Mergent you can search for your companies name to pull up a profile. Take note of the "Supply Chain" tab which offers a list of products and customers for the firm. This type of profile is only available for public companies.
MarketLine Advantage
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In MarketLine you can find company reports for large public and private companies. When reading through a company profile, you can use the left-hand menu to narrow in on parts of the report, such as "Products & Services" to gather more detailed information.

2. Background Information

a) what products and services does your firm offer?

Both Mergent Online and MarketLine from the box above can help you answer questions about your company's products and services.

b) what segments of customers (i.e. demographic or psychographic segments) do they currently serve?

Use our consumer research databases to help find profiles and data on your firm's customers.

Mintel Academic
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Mintel provides consumer goods and services reports for the U.S. and Canada. You can search by various topics or use the Analytics tab at the top of the screen to narrow in on consumer demographic and psychographic datasets.
eMarketer
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eMarketer is an industry and consumer database that prioritizes e-commerce and digital business research. This is a good source to find background information on your company and your consumers.
Passport
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Passport (formerly known as Euromonitor), provides global consumer insights. You can select topics from the Industries menu at the top of the screen or use the search bar to find reports and analytics for your topic.

License information can be found here: License Terms of Use

c) who are their major competitors (both online and offline)?

Both Mergent Online and MarketLine offer competitor listings in their reports.

Additional Sources of Information

The following are databases you can use to round out your research.

ABI/INFORM Collection (ProQuest)
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ABI/INFORM provides peer-reviewed articles, newspapers, dissertations, and more on topics related to business.
Business Source Complete
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Business Source Complete provides access to peer-reviewed articles, newspapers, market reports, and more.

3. Read the Internet Trap

The Internet Trap by Ashesh Mukherjee
ISBN: 9781442649835
Publication Date: 2018

MRKT 452: Consumer Behaviour

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