ARC: Community: ELMAR: Posting areas: methods: dialog

Related ARContent: Secondary Data

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Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2006 12:12:11 -0400
From: Gary Ford <gtford@american.edu>

Dear ELMAR particpants,

I am one of the AMA representatives to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, and the AMA has been asked whether its academic members use the Economic Census (Economic Census at http://www.census.gov/econ/census02/)

The census gets data on businesses at an establishment level, their employment, investments, some financials, etc. There is data buried in there on marketing employment and some marketing expenses. A related program looks at the ownership of businesses by the characteristics of the owners, including Race/Ethnic attributes. This stuff may be too aggregated, detailed (not always firm level, but establishment level), untimely, or anonymous to be useful. Perhaps it is helpful in sales force management on the B2B side. The reports have information of the size and general location of potential customers for intermediate and manufacturing input goods.

1. Are there AMA members using the current Economic Census in their work? If so, what data streams / questions are useful so we can support these areas? What parts could be improved from the marketing user’s perspective?
2. Are there members who have looked at it/tried to use it and found it unhelpful? Why? Specifically, what could be changed to improve usefulness?

We have a meeting at the Bureau of the Census on October 26 and I would like to let people know whether our members are using these data or have any opinions about it.

Email me at: gtford@american.edu

Thanks,

gary

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