Wednesday, February 15, 2006

DEMOGRAPHIC & PSYCOGRAPHIC SOURCES

You'll find these sources helpful when trying to identify age, HH income, race, gender and marital status.

Claritas free reports.
Claritas You Are Where You Live database.
USA Today interactive feature profiling segments of US using demographic and psychographic segementation.
Stat-USA
Geo-Lytics Census data
National Geographic's Map Machine

www.naco.org
The National Association of Counties website helps you find a listing of cities in each county and a listing of counties in each state.NAVIGATE: From the homepage, select “About Counties” and then “Data and Demographics.” You can then do a city search. From “About Counties” you can also “Find a County” and search for counties by state.

http://www.melissadata.com/LookUps/
If you know the Zip code for the city, this will give you all surrounding zip codes with a specified radius, up to 5 miles. It also has lookups for zip code maps, demographics by zip code, lists of zips per county, etc.

http://zip.langenberg.com/
This site will give you provide you with the distance between two zip codes (miles and estimated drive times), provide listing of all zip codes within a specified radius and provide you with the zip codes included in a certain city and vice versa.

www.census.gov
The Census Bureau. This is the best source to find demographic information, and everything else that you would ever want to learn about your area. There are hundreds of reports and maps that you can pull on this site. NAVIGATE: The easiest way to find information quickly is by selecting “American Fact Finder” on the left side of the homepage. You can then type in the city, county, ZIP code, market, etc that you are looking for. Once the page uploads, it gives an overview of the information compiled for the area. You can also click on “Show More” if you need further detailed information like the social or economic characteristics of the area. These reports can be exported to Excel or printed, or simply copied and pasted into a spreadsheet. A direct link to the Census Bureau's Fact Finder.

http://www.ersys.com/
This site compiles census and city information and puts it into maps and graphics which are easy to read and pull quick information from. Simply select the state and city you are researching and it will pull up dozens of search options.

www.chamberofcommerce.com
One great way to find out what’s going in a particular city is to look at the area’s local chamber of commerce. This site helps you search for a city’s local chamber, providing contact information and website links. Once on the local chamber’s website, look for community profiles, economic information, lists of major employers, etc. to find out how and where the city is growing.