Information such as market share or the number of widgets sold can be critical to know when entering a new market.

Although getting hold of good numbers can help you decide what strategy to take, it’s only part of the story. The key is to get numbers that you can rely on plus understand the context around them. A sales increase or decrease can be the result of a competitor moving into the market and launching their products, a factory burning down, which stops a product being made, or tough economic times. You can’t understand a market by numbers alone.

So now that I’ve made that point, statistics are often the first numbers you need for DIY market research. The University of Auckland hosts the OFFStats website. It’s easy to search for the statistical information you need, with links to great stats websites from all over the world. Here you can find out how many motor vehicles there are in Italy to which country makes the best use of information and communication technologies.

Market research reports contain great data and context on the size of a market, however they can often be very expensive. If you have spent thousands of dollars developing your product, it can be well worth the investment to get some reassurance and extra information that these reports can give.

There are ways of getting market data for free or little cost. Market research reports are often released with a free abstract that often has some great background data. A simple Google search can locate these.

Slideshare is a collection of presentations that have often been prepared by industry experts. These are free to download and contain data trends on markets. A similar website is Scribd.

We also have NZ Trade and Industry’s market research. It has loads of free research on a variety of export markets. Try them out now!