Notable E-Book: Market Share Reporter

Market share, the proportion of total sales of a product accounted for by an individual brand, is one of those benchmarks business folk like to look at to get a sense of how one company stacks up against their competition. Actual data is often embedded in reports and articles, and so it is not always that easy to come up with. One excellent source, since 1991, has been Gale's Market Share Reporter (MSR), an annual printed compendium that Sawyer Library has had since its earliest days.

Just recently, we moved this from a print subscription to an e-book standing order, to allow students and faculty to make use of the resource 24/7, from wherever they happen to be. Available on Gale's "Directory Library" platform, we have profiled the MSR so that you can search that alone.

The default option is to search only the latest volume. But if you want to search several years at once, simply control-click several years in the Editions box in the lower middle of the page. (I have selected both the 2009 and 2010 editions in the screenshot above.)

Once you have selected the years you wish to search, just put search terms into the yellow Quick Search box to the left. Do multiple brands (for example, ford and general motors), a type of product (for example, soft drinks), or whatever else seems appropriate. Note that once you click on a results item, you will see not only a table or chart with information, but also active links below that allow you to explore the SIC or NAICS [government industry] code that might get you more useful hits--ones that don't come up with a keyword search.

Our online file goes back to 2000, so any figures of recent vintage should be available online. We also have older volumes in the Reference stacks, should you be interested in consulting them for older figures. And if you'd like a publisher description of MSR, you can find one here.

MSR is a very valuable resource, but since it is only produced once a year, the data will not be the VERY latest. So keep in mind that there are other ways to get market share information. These include going to a major database like Business Source Complete and searching for your company or brand and market share (for example, nike and market share). The TableBase module in RDS Business Suite is also a good source of market share data in a relatively clean form. The unwieldy database from Euromonitor called Global Market Information Database (GMID) is also chock full of useful data....once you find it.

When you are searching for market share information, explore all of your options, including the now-available online version of Market Share Reporter.