Re:How do marketers search for information? - Market Research Forum

You can easily exaggerate the iportance of the Internet as such a tool. It depends on someone already having done the hard work, and after that having given it away. Which some industry publications and associations do. Also some govertnment agencies.

But the most important information may be proprietary. Industries often support syndicated surveys, in which a research company gathers the data from subscribers and publishes it for evertyone's benefit, thereby avoiding the antitrust law violations which might result from larger companies swapping information directly.