VIP Report: Product Review Of MarketResearch ’s Profound

Product Review of ProfoundVIP Report: Product Review of MarketResearch.com’s Profound September 2009The latest publishers to be added include:MarketsandMarkets, which offers worldwide marketresearch reports primarily sold for their currentstatistics, market segmentation, and competitivelandscape. This service tracks more than ten industriesincluding: “The audience for Profound is primarily informationprofessionals rather than the end-user market.”“A full list of publishers can be found in the Advanced searchfunction.”AudienceThe audience for Profound is primarily informationprofessionals rather than the end-user market. It givesthe account holder the ability to manage other people’susage of the system by creating new users, and allowingsome of these to be ‘search only’, so that they cannotcommit to spending l devicesElectronicsSemiconductorsEnergy & power suppliesChemicalsAdvanced materialsFood & beveragesConsumer goodsIndustrial AutomationIT and Telecomms.Coverage and contentMarket ReportsThe majority of the content, and the main reason whypeople subscribe to Profound, is the Market Reportssection. All the content on Profound is provided bythird parties, who produce the reports primarily fortheir own customers. Because of this, while coverage isclaimed to be worldwide and multi-industry, it cannotbe guaranteed that there will always be a report on aparticular industry available for a particular country. Asmight be expected, the industrialised ‘western’ countriesare better represented than the emerging economies. Ifound that the number of reports published by region inthe last two years was as follows:Their deliverables focus on segments comprisingproducts, services, applications, ingredients,technology, and stakeholders for the United States,Europe, Asia & Pacific Countries, and the Rest of theWorld. Titles are available as full reports, chapters,sections, or tablesBioInformant Worldwide LLC, which specialisesin extracting business data from the Internet. Itgenerates market reports which emphasise rapidlychanging trends within the life science industry andprofitable opportunities for companies in the sectorto pursue. BioInformant uses proprietary searchtechnologies to estimate market size, market share,market growth, and market patternsTable 2: Regional CoveragePharmaVision, which offers a consultancy serviceproviding independent pharmaceutical thematicresearch to the healthcare and investmentcommunity, performs due diligence research, andprovides expert commentary in healthcare. Reportscombine expert opinion and scientific analysis withmarket modelling to forecast delivery technologies,drugs and their potential revenue stream, key driversand market trendsNumber of reportspublishedNorth America50,545South America16,811Western Europe40,038Eastern 116,21817,104Australia24,57918,179AsiaIn both cases, titles are available as full reports,chapters, sections, or tables.OceaniaA full list of publishers can be found in the Advancedsearch function.“The majority of the content, and the main reason whypeople subscribe to Profound, is the Market Reports section.” Back to Contents www.vivaVIP.comRegionI noted 29 main industry headings, and most of thesehave more than 5 sub-headings. Profound claims to have700 industry segments and over 500,000 reports. Reportsare not removed from the system, so it is possible to trackdata series through regularly produced reports.-6- Free Pint Limited 2009

Product Review of ProfoundVIP Report: Product Review of MarketResearch.com’s Profound September 2009Most of the reports are of considerable length and arelisted according to their chapters and sections, which canbe ordered separately when allowed by publisher.“Reports are not removed from the system, so it is possible totrack data series through regularly produced reports.”Fig. 1: Report ContentsMarket BriefingsMarket Briefings are sourced from Datamonitor andupdated once a year. They cover UK, France, Germanyand the United States, and give a brief overview of anindustry sector. They are free to subscribers. Recentmarket briefings include: Aerospace and Defence in the United StatesComputer Hardware in FranceFunctional Drinks in GermanyRetail Savings and Investments in the UnitedKingdomOrganic Food in the United StatesOver the Counter Pharmaceuticals in the UnitedKingdomPharmaceuticals in GermanySemiconductors in France.Country BriefingsThe Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) produces theCountry Briefings available on Profound. Typically theyconsist of a 10-page PDF report that includes a mapand some statistical material. Country briefings are not Back to Contents www.vivaVIP.comavailable for all countries. I checked at random for anumber of smaller countries: among the ones I couldnot find were New Zealand, Cyprus, Turkey, Ukraine,and Peru. I did not manage to find a list of the countriescovered by the Country Briefings. Again, they are free tosubscribers.Search optionsThe relaunched Profound has a new search engine,which should prove more congenial to those used toundertaking Google-type searches. There are Simple andAdvanced search options, both of which are clear andeasy to navigate. I found the Simple search more usefulwhen I wanted to build up a complex Boolean search,while the Advanced search seemed more limiting, butthis may be a matter of preference of searching method.“The relaunched Profound has a new search engine, whichshould prove more congenial to those used to undertakingGoogle-type searches.”-7- Free Pint Limited 2009

Product Review of ProfoundVIP Report: Product Review of MarketResearch.com’s Profound September 2009Simple searchAs soon as the user logs in to the Profound service, the Simple search page appears, allowing you to type in yournatural language search terms and click the SEARCH button. There is a drop-down box that allows you to searchwithin Market Research, Market Briefings or Country Briefings, although not all at once. Full Boolean operators can beused in simple searches, and there is online help in using Boolean operators for those unfamiliar with them. This useof Google-style searching is one of the new features of Profound and makes the site very user-friendly and easy tonavigate.Fig. 2: Simple Search Interface“This use of Google-style searching is one of the new features of Profoundand makes the site very user-friendly and easy to navigate.”The search results page then contains a listing of reports, which can be sorted by date or price as well as by relevancy,which is the default.On the left of the pageare a list of terms thatProfound calls SearchNavigators, which allowthe user to refine thesearch further by dateof publication, industrysector, location andpublisher. You canalso see how manyreports fall within eachcategory. These arebasically the taxonomyterms which Profoundhas used to index thereports. I found this avery useful feature ofthe service.Fig. 3 - Search Navigators Back to Contents www.vivaVIP.com-8- Free Pint Limited 2009

Product Review of ProfoundVIP Report: Product Review of MarketResearch.com’s Profound September 2009I searched for reports on the travel agency industry inAustralia, using the Boolean search terms ‘travel agentAND Australia’. This gave me 631 hits, published in thelast two years (the default time span, although reportsare available from the beginning of the service). By usingthe navigator term Travel & Tourism, I reduced this to404 hits, and then with the location term Australasia,I ended with a much more manageable 82 hits, theseventh one of which was a very specific report on travelagency services in Australia by IBIS World. I had not comeacross this publisher before, and I found a feature whichallows the user to click on the name of the publisher inthe product details page for a pop-up description of thecompany. This is obviously provided by the company andis to a certain extent a marketing tool, but it does containsome useful information if you are not familiar with thatpublisher.“I found a feature which allows the user to click on the nameof the publisher in the product details page for a pop-updescription of the company.”In a different search for security in India there were 60hits. By choosing ‘internet security’ from the SearchNavigator fields, I reduced this to five relevant reports.Using the Smart Terms Builder I carried out a search forice cream in Western Europe.Advanced searchThe Advanced search is a way of building up a search byusing what Profound calls Smart Terms, together with theSearch Navigators. Smart Terms is Profound’s proprietarytaxonomy browser and indexing system, designed to actas a filter to find the library of reports on Profound.There are four Smart Terms tabs to choose from: Industry,Company, Location and Publisher. A search strategyis built up by combining these terms with Boolean“Smart Terms is Profound’s proprietary taxonomy browserand indexing system, designed to act as a filter to find thelibrary of reports on Profound.”operators for countries and industries. The Smart Termsappear in a hierarchical view which is designed to allowbrowsing. Clicking on the plus ( ) sign next to any SmartTerm shows narrower terms in the hierarchy. In thelocation box, which covers regions and countries, somecountries appear in more than one regional grouping.Egypt, for example, appears in North Africa, Middle East,Arab States, and Mediterranean. It is possible to pick anynumber of broad and narrower terms to combine them.First of all I picked out ice cream & frozen desserts fromthe industry list. This is arranged alphabetically by broadindustry category with narrow definitions within eachbroad category. My search, therefore, was:Agriculture Food & beveragesFood & beverage productionFrozen foodsIce creams & frozen desserts.The industry terms have been developed specifically byProfound and are not related to SIC codes.I then chose the Boolean operatorAND to move my terms acrossinto the right-hand box wherethe search is built up. I clicked onWestern Europe and moved thisinto the right-hand box. I decidedto exclude any Mintel reports frommy search by picking Mintel fromthe publisher list and adding itto my search with NOT. I did notwant my results to include frozendesserts but there is no way toexclude the term using this searchmethodology. This search gave me202 hits.“Clicking on the plus ( ) signnext to any Smart Term showsnarrower terms in the hierarchy.”Fig. 4: Ice Cream

MarketResearch.com claims to have the world’s largest, continuously updated collection of market research, and although there is some overlap of coverage of full reports between Profound and MarketResearch.com, I did not attempt to compare . Freedonia Focus Freedonia Group Inc Frost & Sullivan GfK NOP