Basic Marketing Research with Excel 3rd Edition by Alvin Burns,Ronald Bush

Exercise 16

Secondary Data to Find Your Career Industry
Soon you will be in the job market. Have you thought about which industry will provide you with a challenging and rewarding career? One thing you want to make certain is to pick a "growth" industry versus a "sunset" industry where sales are declining and layoffs will be inevitable. You can use secondary data to help you make this distinction.
As an example, Mark Eberhard is a retired marine officer and is well versed on firearms and has an intrinsic interest in marksmanship. He wondered if a chain of modern firing ranges would make a successful entrepreneurial investment. He asked himself these basic questions: Are firing ranges growing or declining in popularity? Since firing ranges are often used by hunters, is hunting, of all types, growing or declining? What is the general public's attitude toward firearms? Are American sentiments toward firearms favorable or will negative sentiment push Congress to pass legislation restricting the use of firearms?
These are basic questions potential entrepreneurs should ask about the industry they are planning to enter. Is this a viable industry? Is it growing or declining? Fortunately, for most of these types of questions secondary data are available.
It didn't take Eberhard long to find that the firing range industry had a trade association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF). Trade associations often gather secondary data from various sources and make this information available to members or those who are thinking about entering the industry. NSSF, for example, gathers data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the number of hunting licenses. These data are also available by state, which allows users to pinpoint the largest concentrations of hunters. Furthermore, the data are available for many years, which allow users to look at twenty-, ten-, and five-year trends. Since excise taxes are charged on the sale of firearms and ammunition, Eberhard was able to examine secondary data showing sales of weapons and ammunition over several years. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) also publishes data on firearm licenses by state, as well as an annual report on how many firearms (pistols, rifles, shotguns, etc.) are manufactured each year, and the number of firearms imported and exported.
Eberhard also looked at other information, such as the declining number of firearm deaths published by the National Safety Council, and the low incidence of sports injuries due to hunting, paintball, trap and skeet shooting, and archery published by American Sports Data Inc. After studying this secondary data, Eberhard believed the outlook for the firing range industry was good to excellent. He continued to gather more secondary data, but eventually realized he needed data that was not available. He would have to collect primary data; data gathered for the first time for the purpose at hand. However, the secondary data he had studied would help him formulate the right questions for his primary data collection.
Go to your library and find publications that give you some assessment of industries. There are several sources that give you industry overviews. Your reference librarian may be able to help. Describe an industry in which you have a career interest in terms of its future outlook. Properly cite your source. (Hint: Some of the securities ratings services publish industry overviews.)