The Bureau maintains the largest site available on the web and the largest
repository of demographic information about Americans. (They even gather
information about folks in other countries though it is not near as detailed.)
This site is within the Census Bureau site (above) but it is important enough
to deserve its own designation here because of the vast amount o fvaluable
data it contains. The information is similar to the handbook sold every year
by the government and carried in most libraries with a lot of basic information
about the people in this country as well as business. There is even some information about
other countries.
This too is part of the vast U.S. Census Bureau site but it's main value
is providing very fast access to basic information for each state and county
such as population, geography, and business. You'll find a link on each page
to areas within the Census Bureau where more detailed data about an area are
provided.
Similar to the above, this is another convenient place to enter the Census site. You can easily locate information about people, housing, business, and government from this site as well as get data sets and maps. One of the cool things is the ability to type in a street address and then be provided with a variety of demographic reports.
This too is within the Census site but is buried so deep you might not find it. The data come from surveys (most recently 1997) dealing with such issues such as types of occupants, mortgages, rents, and value of homes. In addition some less obvious issues are addressed as well such as reasons for moving, quality of housing, what's in the housing (plumbing, A/C), and quality of the neighborhoods.
Conducted by the Census Bureau, this annual survey has extensive spending data for many product categories from orange juice to insurance to home renovations.
The Current Population Survey (CPS) is a monthly survey of about 50,000 households.
Estimates obtained include employment, unemployment, earnings, hours of work,
and other indicators. They are available by a variety of demographic characteristics
including age, sex, race, marital status, and educational attainment. They
are also available by occupation, industry, and class of worker. Supplemental
questions to produce estimates on a variety of topics including school enrollment,
income, previous work experience, health, employee benefits, and work schedules
are also often added to the regular CPS questionnaire.
Sure, the Census Bureau may have the most data but more than 70 agencies in
the United States Federal Government produce statistics of interest to the public.
The Federal Interagency Council on Statistical Policy maintains this site to
provide easy access to the full range of statistics and information produced
by these agencies for public use.
If you want to not only find census data but also have some ability to analyze it online, this may be the site for you. You can evaluate and compare the market potential of geographic areas down to the zip code level. User-friendly online query forms are available as well as drop-down menus. To top it off, mapping functions are available too. Be forewarned, you'll probably
have to register in order to have access to all of these data and functionality.
Here's a site that makes it really easy to get some basic demographic data for a specific zip code. It shows you neighboring zip codes so you can easily compare them on some basic demographic varaibles. Keep in mind that while the data come from the Federal Government, some of it is census data and some of it comes from a sample. Also, it appears the data are from the 2000 census so that means it could be out-of-date.
If you want basic demographic information broken down by zip code then this is the place to go. A variety of other information is provided by zip code such as media in an area, income tax issues, and types of businesses (SIC codes).
Using maps, charts, reports, and relevant links, this site covers over 2600 US cities with detailed information on demographics, environmental factors, economic indicators, housing stats, media (newspaper, television, and radio), schools, and transportation.
The AMA is the largest and oldest professional organization of marketing-related practitioners, professors, and students. This site has many helpful resources for people interested in marketing issues and among them is some free demogrphic data. It is a little difficult to find at the site, however. After getting to the site's homepage, click on marketing tools in the navigation panel on the page's left. Another menu will appear and on it click on free demographics service. You will have to register to access the data but it is simple and free. After clicking through a few more pages you are offered data summarized not only by state and county but also by zip codes! While you won't find the detail that would take more time to dig out of the census, it isn't bad for free.
The site is maintained by a research company specializing in demographic analyses. The good thing is that a variety of reports are available for free although you may have to register to have access to them. It is also cool that you can get "ring" data (circle area) around almost any place you enter in the country and then get stats and maps related to it.
This is one of the oldest and largest companies in the area of segmentation.
While most of their information is only available to paid subscribers,
they usually also have some free information available. For example, see this this page that allows you to access demographic and psychographic profiles of neighborhoods by zip code.
This file has 14 spreadsheets comparing various groups (gender, income, ethnic, age, family-type, geographic location, etc.) on a wide variety of things such as their attitudes, shopping behavior, product ownership, and media habits.
The site was developed to provide a visually rich set of mapping tools that provide free demographics and can help improve targeting of advertising. You can examine a state on certain demographic characteristics, zoom in on those areas with the highest concentration of those characteristics, and then determine the media in those areas. Another approach is to click on a station and then get the demographic profile of the area it reaches. Be sure to read the Viewer Instructions to get a good sense of how to do these things and more.
Link to a new part of Microsoft (bCentral.com) where demographic information is provided inexpensively. Some of the reports are free, especially those at the U.S. level vs. a smaller area. The cost of the reports for smaller areas (state, county, zip code) are quite affordable ($35-$150). Even with the free stuff you are able in many cases to drill into more specific information, have a map or table created, and then print it out.
This company helps understand customers, analyze site locations, visualize and map marketing and demographic data, and identify untapped market potential. It does this by creating innovative solutions that combine demographics, consumer spending pattern intelligence, and lifestyle segmentation with powerful technology. They even offer some free, though limited, information
.
The SRI research team continually create, develop and spin off new technologies
and businesses for government and commercial clients worldwide. Most relevant
to those working on marketing-related projects is the organization's work
on values and lifestyle, what they have called
VALS. It is a method of categorizing adult consumers into mutually exclusive
groups based on their lifestyles and several key demographics. VALS is unique
because it highlights factors that motivate consumer buying behavior.
American Demographics is no longer published as a separate print magazine after being bought by Ad Age. However, its archives and even some limited current content can still be accessed. The topics range from the typical demographic issues such as marriage trends, the size of ethnic groups, and the changing social classes to some non-demographic issues such as psychographics, shopping trends,and media habits.
Yes, this is the site for the real estate company. Click on Learn then Neighborhood Information to see some free but limited demographic information about cities and neighborhoods such as percent of households with kids, media income, and house values.
If you want to learn more about statistics itself or statistical information about a variety of topics, this a good place to start. In particular, the sections on Demographics and Opinion Surveys would be helpful in developing B2C segmentation strategy.
The site claims to be the leader in providing timely and objective information on U.S. and international population trends and their implications. Although the site may not be better than the Census-related sites listed above at providing information about Americans, it may be helpful for digging up information about other nations.
A clearinghouse of current public opinion information gathered by well known polling organizations is available at this site. A lot of it is politically related but it also provides information about what Americans' opinions are on hot-button issues of the time.
Arbitron Inc. is an international media and marketing research firm serving radio broadcasters, cable companies, advertisers, advertising agencies and outdoor advertising companies in the United States, Mexico and Europe. Its core businesses are measuring network and local market radio audiences across the United States. The site usually provides some reports regarding media habits for free access and/or download.
ACNielsen is one of the world's leading marketing information company offering services in more than 100 countries. It provides market research, information, analysis and insights to the consumer goods and service industries. See the Publications section under Trends & Insights for complimentary reports and downloads.
This site provides some good information about audiences for cable TV and even has a section devoted to the important ethnic groups in the United States. You can find some demographics here as well as a little bit about each group's psychographics and media habits.
Despite its name, this site is all about African-American Consumers. It is full of research regarding the demographics and psychographics of Black Americans.
Hartford Seminary provides this site which is full of resources. Not
only can you find data on various religions and denominations but there are
scholarly reports as well as results of surveys about religious beliefs.
Links are also provided to hundreds of homepages for denominations.
If you need data on particular religious groups then you definitely should
check out this site. There are references to published membership/adherent
statistics and congregation statistics for over 4,000 religions in the U.S.
and the rest of the world. The data come from both primary research sources
such as government census reports, statistical sampling surveys and organizational
reporting, as well as citations from secondary literature.
The overwhelming majority of Americans consider themselves to be Christians
but what else is known about them as a group? This site studies cultural
trends related to Christian attitudes and behaviors. The organization does
not give everything away but visitors can get a sampling lot of facts and
figures. Check out the Barna by Topic where titles of numerous studies are listed which may provide some free research results regarding things like money,
politics, and values.
From this link you can get data about SIUC students as well as other facts and figures regarding the university. The student body is broken down by age, gender, race, state/country origin, and class level.
Data for other Countries
Looking for some demographic figures on the citizens of countries other than the
United States? Sites for a few specific countries are listed below.
For countries not listed, check out the
International Data Base, the
Trade Information Center, and
CountryWatch.com. Also, consider these great sites that can be useful for student projects dealing with more than one country: globalEdge and The World Values Survey..