World Consumer Markets on CD‐ROM 1999/2000 is the fifth edition of an extensive compilation of global market data. It covers 330 consumer product sectors across 52 countries for the period 1993‐1998. The database is the basis for the following three print titles: Consumer Europe 1999, Consumer Eastern Europe 1999/2000, and Consumer International 1999/2000.
The consumer markets covered include automotives, clothing and footwear, consumer electronics, cosmetics and toiletries, disposable paper products, domestic electrical appliances, drinks, food, home furnishings, household cleaning products, housewares, leisure goods, OTC healthcare, personal goods, and tobacco. Each of these markets evidently comprises many sectors, so there are many further breakdowns. For example, “personal goods” includes jewelry, which is further broken down into costume and real jewelry. For each market segment, researchers can display data on the monetary value or the volume of sales.
The database also covers a variety of socioeconomic parameters, such as consumer expenditure on alcoholic drinks, clothing, food, and communications; trends in retail sales; exchange rates vs the ECU or the US dollar; gross domestic product, inflation, and more. Researchers can create tables to recalculate expenditures per capita, currency in dollars per capita, percent of sales, percent change, real index, nominal index, and average growth rate. They can also study key market drivers that cover both demographic and economic trends.
The main menu offers three windows: region/country, data types, and year, for easy access to all the data types covered by the database. Researchers can select multiple criteria from these lists for multiple comparisons. They can also adjust the windows to their preferences.
The system automatically displays all the data for all the years in the date range provided (1993‐1998), but users can easily narrow down the search to a single product, year, or country using the Find function. There is also a Text Search function that searches a specified list (region/country or data type) for a particular text string. It differs from Find in that a search can be directly executed on a specific text string that occurs at the beginning of a word or anywhere in the text. Users can also edit the items before running a search.
Search results display in spreadsheet format, which can be used to produce charts or to perform calculations on the results by using the built‐in function buttons. Researchers can cut and paste data into one of the extra worksheets provided and manipulate the data with normal spreadsheet functions. They can also add rows of additional data and adjust the screen to view the spreadsheet alone, the results list alone, or to divide between the two.
Researchers can change the focus of the data (whether it is viewed primarily by data type or year) by selecting the relevant pivot button or by manually dragging one of the row or column headers with the right mouse button into the left portion of the screen or into the panel above the spreadsheet.
In addition to converting the data to per capita figures, the program also converts currency to US dollars or ECU, using the annual average exchange rate for each country, and calculates percent changes between two or more different years. It also allows comparing real growth rates between rows of value data in national currencies (real index), growth rates between rows even if the units are not the same (nominal index), as a percentage of a relevant pre‐defined “total category” (percentage of total), or a weighted average growth rate for all the rows in the spreadsheet (average growth rate). Because all the value data already have been adjusted for inflation, the add inflation function is disabled. Researchers can use the Real Index function to remove inflation from growth rates.
Users can manipulate the information in the spreadsheet by cutting, copying, pasting, and deleting data cells from and to the built‐in spreadsheets. Some functions are restricted to different worksheet types, so researchers may want to copy data into a separate spreadsheet program, like Quattro Pro or Excel.
Researchers can sort data in ascending or descending order. They can display it graphically in any of 15 chart types, including line, bar, area, stepped, combination, and pie charts. They can print graphs but not download them. However, they can save spreadsheet data in a number of different formats, such as Excel, tabbed text, HTML, or Formula One (.vts) (default).
World Consumer Markets on CD‐ROM 1999/2000 provides market data from a large variety of “world‐wide official statistical sources”. These sources are not usually identified, but individual data items reconcile favorably with other published data sources. The interface is powerful, flexible, and easy to use. Researchers can view data in a variety of formats and add their own data. This is an important tool for business analysts, researchers, or marketers working in international business. However, it does not contain demographic data for those who need more depth on specific products. World Consumer Markets on CD‐ROM 1999/2000 offers reliable data on a wide variety of consumer products, but its price, though only slightly higher than the three corresponding print publications, will put it out of reach of all but large research libraries.
