Website Review: Euromonitor

Countries & Consumers is an online database that provides the entire range of Euromonitor data, analyses and related reports through a single gateway, giving users full statistical country data within a global context.

You’ll find full national profiles along with articles ranging from spending habits to the growth or decline of various markets. Aimed at researchers and organisations looking at the sales potential for a product launch in new markets, the database also offers consumer lifestyle analysis and profiling.

Just like it says on the tin, Countries & Consumers furnishes information for two main classifications: countries and consumers, with trails on related themes, such as population and leisure and lifestyle. A search analysis option offers a library of reports, analysis and profiles to contextualise the statistical data.

And with one million statistics, there is plenty to put into context. Country profiles offer an overview of political, economic and lifestyle factors and more. The database covers information compiled since 1977, with forecasts and analysis up to 2020, although the final year depends on the sector and the amount of information Euromonitor already holds. Of the 205 countries covered, 71 are given extended coverage.

Although the information is collated from thousands of sources via a range of methodologies, Euromonitor says that each nation’s statistical data is consistently compiled.

When IWR tested the beta version prior to the official launch, the latest articles listed on the homepage came primarily from Euromonitor’s Country Insight and Global Consumer Trend Monitoring databases. There is also a selection of consumer lifestyle reports, but no indication is given of why they are ordered as they are. The database is updated on a daily basis, and the lifestyle statistics are annually updated.

Conducting research with this service is an intuitive process. You pick your industry sector or country/region of preference and drill down through a series of category trees. Each option you choose is added to a selected items column – an increasingly useful aid in retaining a sense of direction and a history trail as you are navigating through the information.

As each section expands, icons indicate what kind of complementary data, statistics, reports, articles or graphical representation is affiliated with the trail. Unfortunately, it is not always particularly obvious what the icons represent, so you end up constantly referring back to the key (which would benefit from being displayed more prominently) to check.

Once you have specified your area of research, you select a geographical location – by country or by economic or political parameters, such as the Commonwealth or the G8 nations. The system also allows users to define their own geographical entities.

The site was a beta, so inevitably some areas didn’t work perfectly, but the presentation of data could be surprisingly problematic. It was sometimes unclear what unit of measurement was being expressed by a statistic, and data tables created after a search would benefit from a simple title. Although a category definitions link explains each table and terminology, using it adds an unnecessary step to the process, particularly as Countries & Consumers is sold as a system that requires minimal user attention.

What do work well are the customisation options. There are useful components to save selections, research and categories, to export results to Excel. The data table results on the site itself are easily manipulated with pivot functions and sums of rows, and tables from different geographical regions can be merged. This lets users compare data on a country-by-country basis, which was something that Euromonitor’s Country Insight service was criticised for not being able to do.

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