Singin' the Market Research Blues

By Deborah Henken Good data is hard to find. It's so easy to get the other kind! If you feel like singin' the blues whenever you try to find reliable business information, you're not alone. A lot of other marketers are singing the same tune. Solid information is critical, the basis for making any marketing plan or decision. Yet, finding that information is easier said than done. The Internet seemed like it would be a quick fix to the problem. While the Internet does serve as a bountiful source of business statistics and information, it has thus far proved both a blessing and a curse for business research. The information on the Net can be inaccurate and difficult to locate without spending a lot of time with fruitless searching. Clifford Stoll says in his book, Silicon Snake Oil, "There is no easy, complete access to information. Never was. Never will be." Although there may be no quick and easy source for accurate business information, we offer in this article a few places to look for helpful data. The Personal Touch
Unlike much Internet information, libraries are not only catalogued and organized, they offer the most user-friendly sources of business information available: librarians. These wizards of information provide the personal touch by expertly guiding us through the ever-increasing maze of available knowledge. Infinitely patient people, librarians spend most of their time gently guiding those of us who search for business information but don't know where to find it. Whether your questions concern finding dates of trade shows or defining prospect lists in a special database, the staff of a good business library is trained to help. The Internet
You don't need to end up disappointed when you try to collect business facts on the Internet. To help lower your frustration level, we recommend the following addresses for free on-line research. Groups such as universities, governments or professional associations generally maintain these sites. U.S. PATENT &TRADEMARK OFFICE
patents.uspto.gov
Completely devoted to patent information, including search engines for a variety of categories. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN www.lib.umich.edullibhomeIDocuments center/frames/statsfr.html
Well organized and maintained site with a variety of hyperlinks to useful information including Census Bureau data, Securities Exchange Commission (EDGAR) filings and U.S. Industrial Outlook statistics. SPECIAL LIBRARIES ASSOCIATION
www.sla.org/pubslitotp/
Another excellent site with hyperlinks to the Wall Street Journal Interactive edition and Hoovers On Line Research, among others. U.S. CENSUS BUREAU
www.census.gov/econ/wWW/ econ_cen.html
Economic census data including industrial products overview, annual survey of manufacturers and other good industry information. WALL STREET JOURNAL
www.wsrn.com/
Stock market information, excellent research hyperlinks including one providing connections to local newspapers and periodicals throughout the country. DEMOGRAPHICS JOURNAL www.amcity.com/journals/demographics
Articles about demographics and trends throughout the country including a search engine. INDUSTRYNET ASSOCIATION www.industry.net
Great site for industry news/information including press releases and hyperlinks to companies. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
www.fedworld.gov
Hyperlinks to a wide variety of federal departments including WorldTech-Foreign Technology Alerts. Just be careful, information alone can only take you so far. As Clifford Stoll says, No amount of data, bandwidth or processing power can substitute for inspired thought. We hope you use the research tools presented here with confidence, but always remember, it is up to you to process this data and convert it into good, profitable business decisions. Deborah Henken served as VP of Marketing at several Silicon Valley start-ups, and in senior marketing and channel positions at Hewlett Packard, Informix and BEA Systems. She earned her MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. Deborah is Founder of the Highland Team. Susan Henken has directed marketing at consumer and health care companies for more than 15 years. She provided marketing consulting to manufacturing companies at Minnesota Project Innovation through a grant from the SBA and Department of Commerce and ran her own consulting business. She is currently
Director of Marketing for Consumer Products at Compex Technologies. She earned her MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Deborah_Henken http://EzineArticles.com/?Singin-the-Market-Research-Blues&id=171957 xanax online without prescription
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The Secrets of Having a Controlled Attitude

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Larry_Edell]Larry Edell Pssst...! Wanna know a secret? How about the secret of having a controlled attitude? You might be tipping the dealers, calling them by name, and be close friends with your Casino Host. You are doing very well, starting to win a lot of money. But suddenly the dealers turn against you, and start a campaign of harassment that ends in either your sevening out, or worse, them taking the dice from you and giving it to another shooter. Wanna know the secret that craps pros use to maintain a controlled attitude? Lets find out! When you play craps you should remember that the table personnel are people with their own problems and desires. Sometimes, casino management looks at their employees just as revenue sources. And sometimes, some crews make more money than other crews. If, for example, one boxman had the misfortune to be at several tables that have lost a lot of money, he might be considered to be unlucky even though it is certainly not his fault. And if this particular boxman ends up at your table, you will not do as well as you would at another table with a different, more easy-going person. This boxman may talk to you and have the other dealers talk to you before and during your shoot. You might see the stickman hit the dice with his stick, by accident. A drink girl could spill a drink on you, also by accident. These things dont happen very often, but they do happen. And these arent the worst things that can happen. The boxman has the power to simply take the dice from you and not let you shoot at all, because you are slowing down the game. The thing to remember is that this is just one person out of hundreds of casino employees who has had a bad experience in the past, and he is letting this experience control his attitude towards your shooting. The most important attitude here however, is not the boxmans, but yours. If you are to continue playing, even at a different table, you can not let a casino employee rattle you. You dont want to end up giving your hard-won money back to the casino. You need to go to your calming place and relax. Go back to your room and remember the good times you had in this casino, and all the comps you received over the last several years. Take a break. Read a magazine. Calm down. You can not let the boxmans attitude take control of yours! You are the only person who should control you. Whether it takes one hour or one day, you should not play again until your attitude is controlled, and you are sure you can perform to the best of your abilities. When the incident is totally forgotten, it is time to attack the tables again. When your attitude is controlled by you and not the casino, you will win, and not the casino! Pssst...! Now you know the secret of having a controlled attitude! (c) 2005 by Larry Edell You can get a FREE issue of The Crapshooter Newsletter, the only newsletter devoted exclusively to craps! Just send two first class stamps to The Crapshooter, Dept EZA, PO Box 421440, San Diego CA 92142, or you can subscribe at http://www.TheCrapshooter.com You will also receive a FREE catalog and a special FREE offer! Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Larry_Edell http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Secrets-of-Having-a-Controlled-Attitude&id=118139 buy 10 mg roche valium from switzerland
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Misrepresentation - Through Silence!

By Azriel Winnett We're back to the subject of ethics, more specifically, business ethics. But unlike ethical dilemmas we've discussed in the past -
when people are confronted with bizarre, freak circumstances
they had never planned for, and then face agonizing choices
regarding how to react - I'm now talking about cases where
people willfully and proactively steer events in a certain
direction. Take the case of the owner of a $32 million business whose
daring entry into entrepreneurship was recounted in a leading business magazine. Just over a decade ago, Kathy Taggares was itching to ditch
her employer, frozen-food maker Chef Ready Foods, to start
her own business. She decided to approach Marriott International about buying one of its salad dressing
factories. Not that she was overly optimistic("As a young
single woman, I'd already had so many doors slammed in my
face"), but what was there to lose? But surprisingly, her overtures met with a particularly warm
reception. Marriott even offered to help her finance the $5
million purchase over several years. It seemed almost too good to be true. Actually, it was. Slowly it dawned on Kathy that the Marriott people believed
she was representing her employer, Chef Ready, as a solo
entrepreneur. Had they realized that she was, in reality,
representing herself, there was no way they would have
taken her so seriously. If she had owned up to the truth, the game would been up,
for sure. Yet another door would have been slammed in her
face. So what did Kathy do now? Simple. "They never directly asked me," she confesses,
"so I let
them believe what they wanted to believe." Sure, they found out at the end - and they weren't at all
charmed by the deception - but by then, the deal had all but
gone through. Twelve years and one more acquisition later,
Kathy Taggeres' company, K.T's Kitchens, now employs 350
people. Effective communication? Having
painted herself into a rather tight corner, our would-be
entrepreneur yet managed to come up trumps by simply NOT
communicating, and doing it very effectively at that. It
remains to answer our question: Was it straight? Well, now, can we accuse Kathy Taggares of lying?
No, it seems she didn't - at least, not with words. "I just
left some of the blanks empty", as she expresses it. But do
you have to SAY something in order to lie? Personally, I don't think so. I'd go along with Robert Louis
Stevenson's definition of honesty: "not just to state the
true facts, but to convey a true impression." If so, no
objective person can sincerely deny that Taggeres lied. That being the case, we're forced to ask ourselves another
pertinent question: Is it ever legitimate to lie in
business? Omitting cases of outright fraud where the law clearly says
it's not, the author of the article I cited (Jeremy Useem:
"Should You Lie?") writes that his magazine "put
that
question to dozens of entrepreneurs and ethicists. And while
the answers that came back are neither black nor white, one
thing is clear: Those who say that lying has no place in
business aren't telling the truth." Mark well what is being said here, and let it sink in. Sure,
we weren't born yesterday. We know too much about the sharks
that abound in the business world. Who is there amongst us
who has not been bitten by them? But that's not what our author is saying here. He's saying
that, in the eyes of the great masses of business people out
there -including some of the most respectable among them -
lies and deception have a LEGITIMATE place in the world of
business. This does not necessarily mean that some respectable
entrepreneurs condone cheating and deceiving as a general
practice. (Hopefully, they don't, and probably, they
wouldn't remain "respectable" too long if they did.)
What it
does mean it means many of them believe there's a time and
place for everything. In other words, an occasional subtle
deception,if not outright lie,is in order and appropriate
when circumstances demand it. And to prove the point, the essay in Fortune Small Business
presents a whole host of real life examples. Business person
after business person is depicted as bending the truth in the
most ingenious ways - whether through speech, deeds, or
untimely silence - to mislead potential or existing clients,
suppliers or investors. Why do they do it? Sometimes, they feel they have no
choice. One professor of business education says company founders
often mislead people because they find themselves in an
"expectations trap": No one will do business with them
until they appear successful, yet they can't be successful until
people do business with them. One way to escape this "Catch 22" is to create the
impression that they're bigger and more established than
they are. Some might achieve this by playing office
background noise in their home office or bringing in all
their relatives to pose as staff members when a client comes
to visit. Others don't hesitate to puff up their
capabilities (Sure, we've built an aircraft hangar before,")
or to describe their vision of their company's future as if
it were happening already. Other academics point out that people tend to live with two
independent sets of ethical standards - one for their
personal lives (what you might call "religious ethics"),
and
one for their business or professional lives. In our
culture, moreover, it might seem natural to model the latter
set on the prevailing ethics of the world of sport, where
shady practices are often seen as acceptable provided you
don't break the Eleventh Commandment: "Thou Shalt Not Get
Caught" (by the referee or umpire, that is). For my part, I'm not impressed. Not at all. Well, what do YOU say? Drop me a note and let me know! Azriel Winnett is creator of Hodu.com - Your Communication Skills Portal. This popular free website helps you improve your communication and relationship skills in your business or professional life, in the family unit and on the social scene. New articles added almost daily. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Azriel_Winnett http://EzineArticles.com/?Misrepresentation---Through-Silence!&id=10030 get phentermine without a prescription
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Nokia N80 - Capture Your Digital World

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Caitlin_Lucy]Caitlin Lucy The present technological advancement in the mobile industry is really commendable. With the changing trend in the mobile design and features, consumers have got a comprehensive range of mobile phones to choose from the market. Leading mobile manufacturers are introducing latest phones to compete with their rivals. In such a situation, it becomes hard to select a mobile phone of your choice. But you can rely on some leading brands. With the launch of the Nokia N series phones, Nokia has given a better choice to the ever growing consumers demand. Though N series phones are popular for their unparalleled multimedia applications, they also possess some unique features individually. The Nokia N80, for example, with a 3.0 mega-pixel pixel camera, UPnP and Wi-Fi connectivity, makes its individual appearance in the mobile world. The candy-bar slider phone in addition to high resolution camera features also comes with Symbian OS, office tools, and lots more. These high end features give an edge to the mobile users in organizing their personal and business world with equal fervour. Though almost all 3G phones available in the mobile market are bulky and so the Nokia N80 (weighing 134 g) but the slider phone with edges rounded out, makes it easy to hold. Feature packed with high performance productivity tools, this 3G phone is all set to catch your attention in the crowd. With a large 2.2 inch display at 262k colours and 325x416-pixel resolution the phone provides a good platform to capture still as well as motion pictures. Capture some incredible moments with a 3.0 mega-pixel camera and share with your friends via MMS. Motion pictures can also be taken with a VGA camera. The 3G technology also lets users enjoy video calls on the move. What else, the get valium without prescription
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Herbal Remedies for Erectile Dysfunction

By Kristy Annely About 300,000 men each year are diagnosed with erectile dysfunction in the United States alone. A third of these men do not respond to the conventional treatment with drugs such as Viagra, Cialis and Levitra. A smaller percentage cannot be prescribed with drugs due to pre-existing medical conditions such as hypertension, diabetes and hyperthyroidism. All these men are essentially left with the option of penile devices that help them maintain erections - or, of course, they could turn to herbal remedies. As populations within the developed world are increasingly turning to traditional medicine for overall healthcare, they have come to realize the fact that herbalism is not a "quack science." Modern medicine is also starting to be more accepting of herbal remedies for treating sexual dysfunctions. A few studies indicate that Gingko Biloba has great potential for treating erectile dysfunction as it increases blood flow to the penis. However, this herb can be fatal if it interacts with blood thinning drugs such as Coumadin (Warfarin) or natural foods like garlic and vitamin E. The herb Aswagandha (Withania somnifera), also called Indian ginseng, has been known for centuries as a tonic for stress relief. It works by decreasing performance anxiety and aiding better circulation. Mexican natives are known to use the plant damiana (Turnera diffusa) as a male aphrodisiac -- however, the active compound in the herb is similar to cyanide and may be toxic in large doses. Saw palmetto (Serenoa repens) has received some attention in the past years as an effective treatment for libido loss for its ability to help the body retain testosterone levels. One of the most popular herbal remedies to emerge that has gained considerable acceptance in recent years is Ginseng. Although the term ginseng has been used to refer to a variety of unrelated plants, many of them show remarkably similar properties and thereputic values. Among them, Chinese ginseng (Panax ginseng), Siberian ginseng (Eleutherococcus senticosus) and Female ginseng (Angelica sinensis or Dong Quai) show poptential as treatments for erectile dysfunction. The FDA does not approve herbal remedies, as they do not fall under their jurisdiction, and this includes remedies for erectile dysfunction. Men interested in these medications should consult their physicians or herbalists in order to determine the appropriate herb and dosage. Erectile Dysfunction provides detailed information on Erectile Dysfunction, Erectile Dysfunction Treatments, Cause of Erectile Dysfunctions, Erectile Dysfunction Drugs and more. Erectile Dysfunction is affiliated with Male Enhancement Exercise. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kristy_Annely http://EzineArticles.com/?Herbal-Remedies-for-Erectile-Dysfunction&id=410332 soma ordering online
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