Current Events in Retailing

Discussion 6: Current Events in Retailing

 

 

Information is critical in any successful retailer. Some will use primary data (that they have collected) for the specific purpose of planning. Others will purchase secondary data, or use free data such as the most recent census data or BLS data. As a small business person we know that planning and data is important in the success of your business.

 

Virtually all data collected by the U.S. Government now are readily available online in some aggregate form, where it can be viewed, downloaded, or mapped. Particularly valuable is the U.S. Census of Population (census.gov)  which has population data available The Bureau of labor Statistics (BLS.GOV) collects data associated with labor, pay, industries and future projections, The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA.GOV)tracks and reports income, spending, and economic outlook, The Small Business Administration (SBA.GOV) has data relevant to many small businesses. Each of these organizations provide data at the national, state, metro, county, city, and some data at the ZIP code levels, Best of all it is all FREE. You pay for it with your taxes.

 

For this discussion,  Research the information available at one of these (or another Government site). Discuss with your peers what data you found, its relevance to what we are learning in this class, and its value to a small business owner.