A guide for Gordon Law's students in ADV 4399, Spring 2025.
Industry Overviews & Analysis
Recognize that any one single article will not address all aspects of a question like "how can The Container Store attract more Gen Z customers who are living on their own?" Instead, carefully select keywords (and brainstorm related words and broader concepts) to find articles that address parts of that question, such as:
Trends, statistics, & analysis of U.S. industries.
Has several very detailed reports that may be helpful for this client: Home Furnishings Stores, Online Home Furnishings Sales, Online Office and School Supply Stores, and possibly others.
U.S. consumer market research & psychographics. Search on the main page to view Expert Insights. Excellent reports on Back to College Shopping, Attitudes toward Higher Education, Marketing to Gen Z, etc.
Or, go to the Analytics tab at the top to search for individual survey questions asked by Mintel, and the demographic differences in how people answered.
The U.S. Census is the original source for nearly all demographic data. But some of the visualization and mapping tools below make it easier to view the data.
While the U.S. Census data will not ask about any particular store, it can reliably answer "big picture" questions like, how many people in The Container Store's metro areas are between ages 18-24, and are enrolled in college?
Map U.S. Census and other data onto a geographic map. You can view either large geographies like states or metro areas, or small geographies like ZIP codes and Census tracts of about 5K people each.
To create an account, click on "create an account" and enter your SMU e-mail address and a password. Also, only 5 users can use this resource concurrently. Please log out when done using this resource.
Select a geography (e.g. DFW metro) and view bar graph and pie chart displays of U.S. Census data for that area.
If the chart as presented doesn't match what you want (e.g., it shows ages 20-29 instead of 18-25), select the link for Show Data and View Table to view the underlying full data table.
Competitor Products & Advertising Copy
Social media and general web searches can be great for this. However, recognize that Google (or Bing, etc.) changes what results you see, based on your past searches! So try to use an Incognito or Private browser, have multiple people do the same search, and see what results are different.
General news article searching is useful to see how your competitors are being discussed in the media. If you run into paywalls, use our subscription links below for access to multiple newspapers at once.
An essential industry magazine. Browse by clicking on the dates on the right side or click "search this publication" in the upper left side to search by keyword.
Who are the authors? What is their authority or expertise on this subject, if any?
What are their claims?
If they are making claims about consumer attitudes, follow the poll or opinion link back to its original source. Verify claims actually are what they say they are!
