ADMN 181/BUS 381
A guide to help with researching market size
Getting Started - Defining Our Business Idea
Estimating the market size for a potential business or product is more of an art than a science. Meaning, you won't find the exact answer to help you determine your potential market. - Begin by defining what you're looking for. Let's say you're interested in started a beverage company. What kinds of beverages? Where do you plan to sell? Online? In stores? What's your geographical potential? The whole country? A province?
- Let's take the beverage company and narrow that down to an all natural energy drink company. At first, our business will start out selling online and across Canada. So, now we have an idea for an online, all natural energy drink company which will sell across Canada.
- We can search for the population of Canada, how many Canadians consume energy drinks, how many shop online, and possibly how many consume natural health products.
Where to Search for Potential Market Size
-
BC Stats This link opens in a new windowProvides free access to current reports and statistics from British Columbia's central statistical agency: Census of Canada and aboriginal population tables, regional statistics and maps, exports and imports, business, industry and environmental statistics, and social and economic data. Includes articles from the following publications: Infoline, Business Indicators, Consumer Price Index, Earnings and Employment Trends, Exports (BC Origin), Labour Force Statistics, Major Projects Inventory, Population Highlights.
-
Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window
Full text articles from business journals and magazines. Includes company & industry profiles and country reports. DS (Discovery Search)
-
State of the Basin This link opens in a new windowProvides access to research on economic, social, cultural and environmental aspects of communities & regions in the Columbia Basin including the Kootenays.
-
Statista This link opens in a new windowA statistics portal that integrates data from thousands of sources. Excellent source for consumer market research.
-
Statistics Canada This link opens in a new windowCurrent statistics and reports from Canada's central statistical agency. Data tables include CANSIM and the Census. Statistics can be accessed by subject area including: Aboriginal peoples, business, environment, health, population and science. Statistics Canada publications include The Daily, Health Reports, various research papers, and much more.
Searching for Market Size
Statista
- Statista is a great resource to begin your market size search.
- We can begin by using the Research AI search tool in Statista, which you can find at the top of the Statista home page.
- You can enter any type of question you have into Research AI. For our business idea, we might want to know what the population of Canada is. In which case, simply enter: what is the population of Canada? into the query box. Click Get Insights.
- Research AI will return an answer, a brief commentary, and the sources that were used to generate the answer.
- Now that you have the overall population of Canada, enter a new query. For example: how many Canadians consume energy drinks?
- Given we are looking at staring an online business, another query could be: How many Canadians shop online?
- Keep in mind, Statista will have answers to "broad market" questions. For example, you won't be able to enter a question such as: How many people in Castlegar consume energy drinks? We have to think bigger and then extrapolate our answers from there. So if 30% of Canadians consume energy drinks, we can make the broad assumption that 30% of people in Castlegar consume energy drinks.
BC Stats
- BC Stats is a good source for finding the population of a place in British Columbia. Click on Population Estimates, projections, statistics on the home page.
- Next, click on Population estimates.
- And then click on Municipal and sub-provincial areas population, 2011-2023.
- Locate the place in BC where you want to find the population for in the file. This resource is good to see the population change over the last decade or so. Maybe there's a place in BC you're interested in starting a business, but it has a rapidly declining population. You may want to look to a different area that has an increasing population.
Business Source Ultimate
Business Source Ultimate is a good database to use when looking for information on an existing company. For example, we may want to look at an energy drink company such as Red Bull to see what information is available. It's also a good resource use to look for any sources of information that may discuss potential impacts on the business you're interested in creating.
Selkirk College acknowledges the traditional territories of the Sinixt (Lakes), the Syilx (Okanagan), the Ktunaxa and the Secwépemc (Shuswap) Peoples.
