I'm still unearthing hidden treasures in our new Datamonitor360 resource. This one may be old news to some of you, but did you know that you can find country-specific data on different distribution methods for household products?

Hmmmm... that was a mouthful. Let me try a few examples instead:

• More than 84% of the dental floss sold in India goes through pharmacies - twice the proportion for Egyptian pharmacies.

• Supermarkets are the most popular distribution point for potato chips in New Zealand, but only the third ranked venue in Japan.

• About 1% of the juices sold in Brazil are found in vending machines, but more than double that share (2.5%) are sold that way in Finland.

To get to this sort of distribution data:

1. Go to the SFU Library page on Datamonitor and click on Connect.

2. Click on Databases, then on Market Data Analytics. This should open the MDA db in a new window/tab.

3. Choose a product, then click on Proceed to Country Selection.
(Note that only food & beverages, household & pet products, personal care products, and tobacco are covered in this part of Datamonitor360).

4. Choose a country.

5. Choose the data type (top right corner): Distribution.
(Note that you could also choose country-specific market value, market volume, or company shares data at this point, but I'm focusing on distribution methods today...)

6. Click on Proceed to Next Screen.

You can then download your data as an Excel file.

There's a lot more you can do with this tool -- from comparing sales forecasts for a specific product across more than one country to comparing forecasts for a range of products in a single country -- explore!

Want to read more on Datamonitor360? Start with my blog post from a few weeks ago.

Let me know if you have any questions.

-- Mark Bodnar : mbodnar@sfu.ca