Unpacking Consumer Packaged Goods with Mintel’s Global New Products Database

The Mintel Global New Products Database (GNPD) is a new Lippincott Library resource for researching the consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketplace. GNPD focuses on new products in the food, drink, beauty and personal care, home care, health and hygiene, and pet markets in 86 countries. Mintel has been monitoring products since the 1990s and adds more than 30,000 product launches to GNPD each month. In addition to new products, GNPD includes relaunched, reformulated, and repackaged products and new varieties or extended ranges of existing products. Helpful tip: if a product is purchased by another company, Mintel categorizes this as a “relaunch” and creates a separate GNPD record reflecting the new company’s ownership.

Mintel users may have encountered GNPD content during general searches on the Mintel platform. GNPD data and information appears in Mintel Country and Global reports, under Content Type: Innovative Products, and when using the Product Features filter. Now, users also have the option to search within GNPD exclusively.

To access GNPD from the Mintel platform, navigate to the Analytics menu at the top of the page and scroll over Products. From there, you can perform a basic keyword search, access the Advanced Search tool, research ingredients, and explore CPG trends.

Basic keyword searching provides quick access to new products. Every field in GNPD is keyword-searchable. Search suggestions allow you to drill down by product name, company name, flavor, fragrance, ingredients, and more.

Use the filters on the search results page to focus results on region, product claim, ingredients, company, and more. The “Refine search” free text box allows for keyword searching within results.

Advanced Search allows you to limit a search by multiple filters, many at a detailed level, enabling a refined list of results:

The example below reflects an Advanced Search for the key phrase “ice cream” in the product description, limiting to products containing the ingredient almond milk, and limiting geography to Latin America:

Results can be sorted in several ways, including by geographic Market:

Drilling into a product record yields Product Details including package size, product positioning claims, as well as Company & Source Details including manufacturer, retail store where the product was purchased, and the product price:

Product records also include nutrition facts, packaging information, product variants (when available), and links to GNPD records for similar products:

The Advanced Search function is also accessible from the basic search results page by clicking the “Edit with advanced search” link.

Product records can be downloaded into Microsoft Word, Excel/CSV, PowerPoint, or HTML. Customizable templates are available for Excel and CSV downloads. Product images can be downloaded as JPG files.

GNPD search results can be visualized, charted, and tabulated for trend analysis. Search results may also be shared through a direct link. To save GNPD searches, create a free Mintel personal profile using your Wharton or Penn email address. From a search results page, click “Save search,” name the search, and save it. You can also create email alerts for new products meeting your search criteria.

The GNPD Hopper is similar to the basket feature in Mintel reports. From a search results page, click “Add to Hopper,” then “Create new Hopper.” Name the Hopper, add records to it, and save it. You can also add Hopper comments and share Hoppers. Saved Searches and saved Hoppers are accessible from the Products page under the Analytics menu.

This is merely a brief highlight of how GNPD can streamline research in the CPG sector. To learn more about GNPD’s many tools and features, the Help & Training section accessible from the top right side of the Mintel database includes a Glossary, User Guide, and forthcoming training videos covering basic and advanced searching within GNPD.

This video from Mintel demonstrates popular GNPD features mentioned above:

For additional assistance with Mintel GNPD, please contact a Lippincott Librarian.

GNPD covers June 1996 to present. For CPG data and information prior to 1996, search GNPD’s PDF Archive, which dates back to 1973.

$1000s in Free Market Research—At the Library!

This post originally appeared in Wharton Entrepreneurship’s Blog:

As an entrepreneur on campus, you will be impressed and excited by the types of resources the library provides. Are you looking for trade journals to read to develop ideas; industry research to learn about sectors; demographics databases to identify customers; company directories to create a list of possible competitors; financial benchmarks to draft projections; or deal summaries to understand the funding climate? The library can help! We strive to purchase resources used across academic and corporate settings, including more than 120 business related databases, most of which are available to students, faculty and staff of Penn with their PennKey and password, anywhere they have an internet connection, through the library website.

 

With so many resources, it can be daunting to know where to start! Fortunately, we’ve built in some help from theLippincott Library home page. Our Research Guides are authored by our business librarians and organized by topic. Our Business FAQ offers quick answers to commonly asked questions.  But the absolute best way to learn how to navigate our resources is to contact my colleagues and me at Lippincott Library. Send us an email at lippinco@wharton.upenn.edu, call us at 215-898-5924, chat with us, stop by the library, or visit us in Huntsman in GSR 251 from 12:30 to 1:30pm, Mondays through Thursdays during the semester. We can direct you to library assets most relevant to your topic, provide instruction on effective database searching and assist you in developing a strategy to find what you want.

Do you want to scour the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal every day to track trends and news? You can do that with Factiva.

Do you want to read trade journals about the beverage industry because you are interested in launching a kombucha tea business? You can do that with Business Source Complete.

Do you want to get an overview of demographics and spending behavior of America’s pet owners? You can do that with Mintel.

Do you want to get perspective on remote patient monitoring systems? You can do that with Marketresearch.com Academic. And yes, you are reading that correctly. That report is valued at $4200, and you have access because you are affiliated with Penn.

The resources available through the Penn Libraries are vast. Save yourself time, and contact us to explore valuable information to develop your entrepreneurial ideas. You will wonder why you didn’t talk to us sooner!

Please see our Research Guide, Entrepreneurship and Small Business for additional resources.

Puttin’ on the Ritz – Sources for Data on Wealth

In the U.S. there is an increasing concentration of assets in the hands of the wealthy. This trend has given rise to phrases such as the “1%” and the “99%”.  Here are some data sources to help us answer such questions as “Who are the richest people?”, “How many of them are there?”, “How rich are they?”, and “How do they spend their money?”

Richest Lists

Forbes has a number of “richest people” lists in its magazine including Forbes World’s Billionaires and Forbes 400 The Richest People in America. In addition to names, photos, and net worth, the lists have information on residence, age, and source of income.  Using Forbes’ data, Wikipedia has compiled a convenient list of the Top 10 Richest People in the world by year from 2000 on.

Rich Demographics

Capgemini and RBC Wealth Management’s 2012 World Wealth Report is a freely available annual survey of “High Net Worth Individuals” (HNWI) from 70 countries. HNWI are defined as those with financial assets, excluding residence, of more than 1 million US dollars. Capgemini also discusses “Ultra HNWIs” individuals with financial assets of more than 30 million dollars. The report includes statistics on type of financial assets and a ranking of high wealth individuals by geographic area and country.