Simmons OneView

Simmons is a very cool database recently acquired by Andersen Library. Simmons is a standard market research tool used by marketers, media planners, entrepreneurs, and others.

So what kinds of data can you get out of Simmons? Tons:

  • Individual and household demographics, including all the obvious ones and the not-so-obvious too (military service, club memberships, recent job change, do you recycle?)
  • Internet, cable, radio, cell phone, print media use habits
  • Purchasing habits and ownership for everything from mascara to bratwursts to car insurance to leaf blowers
  • Leisure, hobbies, travel habits
    And much more! You can really get lost in the piles of data (not that I would know about such a thing, ahem…)

    The real power of Simmons is, you can create a cross-tabulation to compare virtually any of their criteria.

    A couple of caveats about our subscription: since it’s quite expensive, we only have purchased the dataset that is 3 years out of date, and it has a user limit of 10 users at a time — try back in a few minutes if you can’t get in.

    Simmons is a bit non-intuitive to use at first. Try these two video tutorials to get you started: How to create a crosstab (select your data for comparison) and Understanding your results. If you have more questions, feel free to contact me or any of the librarians at the Reference Desk.

  • About Naomi Schemm

    Naomi is a Reference & Instruction Librarian for the College of Business & Economics at Univ. of Wisconsin-Whitewater. While not helping students and faculty with their research, she enjoys singing, ballroom dancing, crafting, and cooking.
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