Sophie Bury, Head & Business Librarian, Bronfman Business Library

Published Thursday March 20th, 2014

Editor’s Note: At a recent meeting, your Bronfman Reference Team was discussing some of the great questions that you all ask us on a regular basis. Some of these questions are great because you (temporarily) stump us, and others because they demonstrate just how innovative you all are in your thought processes. Either way, we decided that we not only wanted to share with you some of your amazing questions, but also the answers! This post forms part of our Best Questions Series. We hope you enjoy (and learn from) these as much as we do!

Best Question:

Where can I find data about consumer preferences (cars, food, lifestyle) in Quebec?

Answer:

When looking for information about consumer preferences check out our Marketing Research Guide. It has a whole section titled “Marketing and Consumer Data” with quite a few resources that will be relevant in answering this question.  Many of these include market research databases with reports and data or sources of data from Statistics Canada or other specialized tools that allow you to obtain demographic or lifestyle related data such as PMB Online and Simply Map Canada. This guide also has a whole section titled “Finding Articles” and this is also relevant for answering this question as explained below.

One of the tricks in answering this question successfully is knowing where to look for resources that will cover lifestyle trends or consumer preferences at the level of an individual province like Quebec.

One recently acquired resource that is easy to use and gives you data about consumer attitudes and preferences at the level of individual provinces in Canada is PMB Online. You can get to it by typing its name in to the search box at the library home page https://www.library.yorku.ca Click on “2009 or Later Studies” when in the database.  You will then see a menu of items to choose from relating to different products or consumer lifestyle habits. For example, one of the choices is automotive. Sub options include car make or model, ownership, vehicle maintenance among other things. Below is a sample table showing what type of vehicle Canadians own:

If you click on any of the headings in the table, e.g. “Present in Hhld”, demographic breakdowns will be provided for each product type, including geographic location, at the level of individual province including Quebec. Results can be filtered to view only specific demographic variables and then exported to Excel.

Another tool that will help you as you do research on lifestyles in Quebec is Simply Map Canada. It allows you to generate both maps and tables displaying demographic or spending patterns data for one or more specific geographic locations in Canada, e.g. provinces, cities, towns, municipalities, neighbourhoods and so on.  For this specific question you’ll probably want to draw on the data it contains from the Survey of Household Spending to find out how much consumers are spending in Quebec on cars or food, for example. The recent addition of a new module called the PRIZM C2 segmentation data and the associated Marketer’s Handbook from Environics Analytics will also help you research consumer lifestyles in Quebec. This is a consumer segmentation system for Canada which classifies Canadians in to one of 66 lifestyle types including some that are specific to Quebec. Detailed profiles of these consumer segments are available from this handbook, including psychographics providing insights in to the behaviour and mindsets of consumers. You can use this tool to look at consumer segments in specific geographic areas including Quebec. For more on using Simply Map Canada check out our guide.

Getting back to articles, if you check out the Journal and Magazine articles section of the Marketing Research Guide a good database to search is CBCA Complete. This focuses on business and current affairs in Canada and has much of relevance at the level of individual provinces. You can also get to it by typing its name in the main search box at https://www.library.yorku.ca

Once in the database, go to advanced search. In one row type like-terms e.g. “Consumer attitudes” OR “Consumer behavior” or “Consumer Preferences” or lifestyles and on the next row type Quebec. It’s also best to search Quebec as a location for higher relevance of results.

You find relevant articles such as this one titled: Blais E. (2004). “The 36 Keys of the Québécois Revisted” Marketing, 109(37), 11.

The articles are sorted by relevance, so you might want to sort by date to view the latest articles first.

It’s also a good idea to search Factiva which is listed in the Newspaper Articles section of the Marketing Research Guide and allows you to search news sources all over the world including Canada. You can limit by region, i.e. Quebec and then search terms such as the ones used above. Another good idea is to limit to surveys/polls which is an option when you click on subject and then on content type.

Another specific source that is relevant to this question is Canadian Social Trends which was published by Statistics Canada annually till very recently (2012). It is best searched using CBCA Complete here using a search such as this one which can get at lifestyles generally or specific aspects of interest such as food or cars:

There are many different ways to submit your research question to Bronfman Business Library. You can email us at bronfref@yorku.ca, chat with us here, phone us at 416-736-5139 or drop by in person.

Will your question be the next selected for “Best Question”?