How a demographic dimension can improve the quality of small business marketing research.

While there has been a great deal of recent progress in bringing a demographic dimension to marketing research in general most of the nonproprietary literature has focused on applications in the large business context. What has been missing and is the topic of the present paper is how a demographic dimension can improve the quality of marketing research for small businesses. While many small business considerations are the same as those one would have for large businesses (e.g. show a profit have a reasonable return on investments and assets) there are some aspects about small businesses that render large business analogies of little use. The general areas where a demographic dimension yields important information within the marketing research context are consumer profiles locational analysis market area analysis generating demand and sales forecasts and in analyzing the potential for new business. Small businesses tend to operate not only for profit as larger businesses do but also to provide psychological benefits to the owner. Small business owners often fail to do strategic planning because 1 or 2 persons must perform all tasks. Most small business persons seek help with 1) estimating demand 2) determining why business is not as good as it should be 3) analyzing the business "image" 4) choosing a new location 5) defining market boundaries or customers and 6) identifying the market for new products or services. The authors attempt to perform good market research emphasizing demographic data and analysis when appropriate. (authors modified)