Oxford Brookes UniversityMintel Oxygen Plus market research reports
To connect on campus
To connect off campus
To search Mintel
To export, download and print results
Market research reports are a valuable source of information on products and services. Sales figures, market trends, advertising figures, details of sales channels, information on leading brands and companies, and demographic profiles and surveys of consumers are usually included. Mintel are particularly renowned for the amount of original research they undertake. We subscribe to a variety of Mintel series, all cover the UK only and date back 10 years.
- Mintel reports: UK covers consumer goods and services. All the industries that benefit from any household's expenditure is included. The series available include: Automotive, Beauty and Personal, Drink, E-Commerce, Fashion High Street, Food, Foodservice, Health and Hygiene, Health and Wellbeing, Household Leisure, Non-fashion High Street, Technology, Travel Industry.
- MBD Industrial: UK covers over many industrial, professional and business to business (B2B) markets. Series include: Industrial Build, Industrial Business, Industrial Engineering, Industrial Professional/Office. Look here for reports on Gas, Sewage, Dentistry, Timber, Bathroom Equipment, Fleet Services, to name a few examples.
- Horizons: UK reports examine categories of consumer, general
strategic issues and lifestyles, rather than products or services,
for example, Obesity, British Lifestyles, What the British do on a Bank Holiday, Green and Ethical Consumer, Marketing to Children Aged 7-10, Fear-led Economy. We do not take the current year's reports which are embargoed. It is important when you look at any report in Mintel to browse the Horizons reports which may give a valuable information on background trends.
In addition to market research reports, a variety of news services are available.
We do not subscribe to Mintel Finance, European, US, Irish or International Travel and Tourism reports.
To connect on campus
Click on: http://academic.mintel.com/
Read the conditions of use.You must then click on the I Agree button located at the bottom of the page and agree to Mintel's conditions of use or you will be invited to buy reports.
To connect off campus
Off campus access is more complicated than other databases. This database uses Athens authentication and on the first occasion only that you use it Mintel ask you to register and comply with the academic conditions of use.
For off campus users this database uses Athens authentication. Log on to Athens first by clicking on the button at the bottom of the Brookes Library homepage:
http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/library/
Click on the Athens login button and enter your Oxford Brookes Username and Password.
For the next 8 hours you will remain logged in to Athens so long as you do not close your browser. Click on the off campus URL for the database you require and you will automatically be connected.
Use the back button to navigate back to this page and click on the off campus URL:
1 Click on: http://academic.mintel.com/athens
2 On the first occasion only you will be asked to register with Mintel: a screen appears - Mintel Academic Access - User Details.
4 Fill in all the relevant information in the form and send. An email containing your Validation Code will be sent to the email address with which you registered. You will not be required to fill out the form again. You can register at any valid e-mail address of your choice - academic or otherwise.
5 You will be presented with the following screen - Mintel Academic Access - Enter validation Code. Check your email - the Validation Code should have been returned immediately. Enter your Validation Code in the Validation box.
6 If you do not receive an email, please check that you entered the correct email address. Edit your details if necessary by clicking on Edit Personal Details and then amend the email address. Click on Re-send the Validation Code to get it sent again.
7 Once you have entered the Validation Code, click the Validate button.
8 Please note - you only need to enter the Validation Code once. The next time you log on using your Athens login, you will go straight to the Terms and Conditions page.
9 You will then be presented with the Terms and Conditions page.
10 If you agree to the terms set out, click on the I agree button and you will be taken in to the Mintel database.
When you have logged on successfully the My Reports screen appears listing the series above and Oxford Brookes University should appear in the top right of the screen.
Next time you log in, you need only log on to Athens, then click on the Mintel off campus URL: http://academic.mintel.com/athens go into the Terms and Conditions and click on I agree to enter.
Please note that once you have logged in to Athens you can click on the off campus URL for any other Athens resource for the next 8 hours and you will not have to enter your username and password.
To search Mintel
An exercise on using this database is available in our Virtual Learning course "A guide to using business and economics databases", which covers most (not all) of the business databases. Every student and member of staff can register themselves by consulting the page on the Virtual Learning Course at: http://www.brookes.ac.uk/library/business/virtuallearning.html
However, for your convenience we have linked the exercise from here: https://www2.brookes.ac.uk/library/resources/how_to_use_Mintel.pdf
This document is on the intranet, off campus users will have to enter their Brookes username and password to enter. Register for the course if you want to check the self-test results.
Contact a member of the subject team at businesslibrarians@brookes.ac.uk if you have difficulties.
Browsing Mintel
This database is very easy to use:
- Click on the Show All....links at the bottom right of each series to obtain complete lists of reports available. The reports are listed in date order, click [a-z] at the right if you want the list in alphabetical order. To read a report click on the title.
- When the contents page for the report appears make sure you scroll all the way down so that you see all the links to the sections and all the news features. Make sure that you look at the appendices that contain much of the hard data and graphs on which the reports are based.
If you have something specific in mind you can use either the search box on the top right of the screen or advanced search, available in the menu bar, to find it.
Search box
- In the box next to search at the top right of the homepage, enter the product, service, company etc. you want to search.
- After typing in a word or phrase click go to start the search.
- The quick search screen is set to search across all the Mintel reports you can access and will satisfy most search needs.
Advanced Search screen
- To do a more thorough or detailed search, click on the main Mintel toolbar advanced search option to go through to the search menu.
- The format is the same as for Google search and Boolean searching is not used. You will need to think carefully about creating search terms. For example entering green tea will search for the phrase green tea, but also green OR tea . To limit the search to green tea you should enclose the phrase in quotation marks: "green tea".
- search type the default setting Reports is usually needed.
- Set maximum results to a sensible level, say 50.
- Uncheck the Include word variants box.
Results screen
- The list of reports returned is sorted by relevance, but you can choose to sort them by date or in alphabetical order.
- Click on the title of your chosen report to be taken to the whole report.
- You have the option to repeat your search in other areas of Mintel. Searching the commentary available in Whats Hot or for Companies may be useful.
To export, download and print results
- Only one section at a time can be downloaded or printed, not whole reports.
- Click on Download in the left margin to open up the file as a Rich Text File (.rtf) in Word which can be printed or saved.
- Export to basket in the left margin is a facility provided for grouping together selected documents to a temporary list for downloading later.
- Print in the left margin enables you to print directly.
- There are several options for downloading the tabular and graphical information within reports. Tables can be downloaded as spreadsheets or used to create a new graph using the graph wizard. The new graph can then be downloaded or saved.
- Off-campus students are limited to downloading 100 sections. On-campus students are not restricted.