Industry Research Reports

A breakdown of the content included in IBISWorld Industry Reports.

Updated over a week ago

About

Confirm you’re in the right place with a quick definition of the industry, its products and services, major companies and other key identifiers.

Industry Definition

We create holistic and concise industry definitions to give you a broad understanding of the industry by enhancing definitions from statistical agencies (E.g., the US Census Bureau, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the UK Office of National Statistics, and the German Federal Statistical Office).

Related Terms

Here you’ll find commonly used terms related to the industry. Click on any underlined term to jump to where that term is used in the report.

What’s included in this industry?

This section outlines the products and services this industry provides. Click any underlined term in this section to see how the product or service is performing in the Products and Markets chapter.

What’s not included in this industry?

These products and services are categorized under different industry titles. Click on the products or services in this section to jump to the industry report that they’re a part of.

Companies

Here you’ll see the top companies that currently hold the highest percentage of the industry’s market share. Click on the company names for more specific performance data in the Companies chapter.

Related Industries

Explore industries in the same sector and industries that complement and are similar to the industry. Click on any of the industries to open the Industry Report for that industry.

At a Glance

Get a quick overview of key industry information found throughout the report.

You can click on any section heading containing an arrow to jump to the corresponding full section within the report.

The At a Glance chapter will appear differently for commercial bankers based in the US or Canada. If this describes you, please read At a Glance for Bankers.

Major Players

We use the standard definition of a major player – one that operates primarily in an industry and generates over 5% of the industry revenue. We identify up to six major players for each industry. Click the section title for more details on distribution of market share in the Companies chapter of the report.

Industry Structure

Understand the level and trend of key industry characteristics found throughout the report.

Products & Services

Understand which revenue streams are most important to industry operators by seeing each segment’s size, both in units of currency and as a percentage of total industry revenue.

Key External Drivers

Discover the factors affecting an industry that are outside of industry operators’ control and their level of impact. Examples of Key External Drivers include exchange rates, commodity prices, consumer attitudes, weather conditions and government policies.

Executive Summary

This section gives a high-level overview of recent industry trends covered more in-depth throughout the report.

Performance

This chapter indicates the health of the industry, giving insight into how industry operators are currently performing and how their performance may trend in the future.

Current Performance

Click through the chart tabs to view key data and trends as well as the interactive chart by revenue, employees, businesses and profit. The chart includes historical, current and forecasted data compared to the annual change for each measurement.

See the analyst insights to understand the trends driving current performance in an industry.

Volatility

Understand how volatile an industry is, its growth versus volatility and insight into what’s currently influencing volatility for the industry.

Outlook

See our forecasted five-year industry growth rate since the report's publication and the factors driving it.

Ours analysis points to potential threats or opportunities over the next five years, such as government regulation and policy change, industry life cycle changes, changes in barriers to entry, potential changes in growth strategies and expectations of major players.

Life Cycle

All industries have a life cycle with the following phases:

  • Growth: The industry is growing faster than the economy

  • Maturity: The industry is growing at the same rate as the economy

  • Decline: The industry is growing slower than the economy

The Life Cycle chart shows where the industry currently is in its life cycle by plotting the relationship between the industry’s change in contribution to the economy and the percentage change in the number of industry establishments.

The chart is accompanied by analysis of macroeconomic factors influencing the industry’s stage in its lifecycle.

Products & Markets

This chapter covers an industry’s products and services, markets and trends in international trade.

Products & Services

This section details the products and services operators in an industry provide and the size of each segment. Product and service shares are calculated based on the current year's revenue.

The Products & Services Segmentation chart.

This section’s analysis covers economic factors affecting industry performance and trends and changes in innovation affecting product and service segments.

Major Markets

Here you'll find details about the key markets that buy the industry’s products or use its services. The chart shows each market’s size (calculated using the current year’s revenue). Markets can be segmented into other industries, final consumers or overseas markets.

You’ll find analysis below the chart on the different trends within each market and the ways these trends affect industry performance.

International Trade

Use the International Trade interactive map to explore an industry’s concentration of imports and exports and the trade balance for each country.

The Life Cycle chart.

The analysis includes the level of exports and imports, the destinations and origins of the trade and a perspective on the effects international trade has had on an industry.

This section helps to determine which countries have a comparative advantage in producing a good or service and how that affects the domestic market. The higher the level of globalization and trade, the less power an individual operator might have. When the exchange rate is lower, it makes exports cheaper and imports more expensive and vice versa.

Imports

Understand how an industry’s imports are trending and what the current import trends are.

Exports

Understand how an industry’s exports are trending and what the current export trends are.

Geographic Breakdown

Explore regional trends and business concentration to understand the business landscape, find opportunities and conduct regional benchmarking.

Business Locations

The interactive Business Concentration map shows the concentration of establishments throughout the regions of a country. You’ll find analyses detailing why the industry is located where it is, trends in operator locations, and the movements of those trends. The business locations analysis is accompanied by a chart comparing establishments and populations across the country's regions.

Competitive Forces

Following the Porter’s Five Forces framework, this chapter gives you data and insights on what’s driving competition in an industry and the challenges industry operators and new entrants may face.

Concentration

The Market Share Concentration chart indicates how dominant the top four operators in an industry are by showing what percentage of the industry’s market share they control.

The market share of the top four operators is calculated by dividing the revenue generated by an operator by the current year's industry revenue.

You can compare the top four companies’ market share in the industry to the sector average, which is calculated by taking the average of the market share for the top four operators across all industries in the sector.

The Market Share Concentration chart.

Use the analysis accompanying the chart to understand the factors impacting trends in market share concentration. The analysis includes a chart with insight into the size of companies holding the most market share in the industry.

Barriers to Entry

Here you’ll find the level and trend of barriers to entry and analysis detailing the potential challenges new industry entrants may face.

Substitutes

Understand the alternatives to an industry, their level and trend and insight into why customers may turn to these other industries.

Buyer and Supplier Power

Use the supply chain diagram to understand an industry’s upstream and downstream supply chains.

Gain more insight into who has influence across an industry’s supply chain with trends and analysis on the different power held by buyers and suppliers.

Companies

See who the leading companies are in an industry and how their performance is trending.

Market Share

The Industry Market Share by Company chart shows the market share of the top companies by percentage of total market share compared to the market share held by the rest of the companies in the industry.

You can click into the years at the bottom of the chart to see the change in distribution of market share over the past five years.

The Industry Market Share by Company chart.

Companies Overview

Here you’ll find more data on the top companies found in the Industry Market Share by Company chart.

Use the company overview section to understand what the company is; company details; other industries the company is in; trends in revenue, market share and profit margin over time; and analysis on what’s influencing the company’s performance.

Use the drop-down menu to view the company overview for all the top companies listed.

The Company Overview section.

External Environment

Understand the demographic, economic and regulatory factors positively and negatively affecting the industry.

External Drivers

Discover the demographic and macroeconomic factors outside of industry operators’ control that have a direct impact on their performance.

Dive deep into each factor with historical and forward-looking charts followed by analyst insights into how each factor influences the industry.

Regulation & Policy

This section details an industry’s regulatory environment. We outline what regulations affect an industry, whether compliance is different to comparable industries and how that affects performance. To determine the level and trend, an industry is compared to the total economy.

There are three types of regulation:

  • Government imposed

  • Self-regulation (typically through industry associations and trade groups)

  • Compliance requirements (related to entry and ongoing operation)

Deregulation, if applicable, may be mentioned, as it will have a considerable effect on nearly all aspects of operations.

The effects of regulation in upstream and downstream industries are also considered. For example, a new code of conduct for produce wholesalers would have implications for produce growers.

Industry Assistance

This section discusses what (if any) assistance an industry receives and why.

Assistance refers to government or other measures designed to improve the performance of an industry or sections of an industry, such as grants and subsidies. It also includes support from industry bodies, such as associations and lobby groups.

This section also includes protection, which refers to non-tariff forms of protection for the industry (E.g., regulations, tax concessions, quotas, quarantine restrictions, packaging, labeling and quality standards).

Natural protection refers to industries that do not face a high level of imports due to the nature of their products. Generally, these are industries that sell high-weight, low-value products that would not be cost effective to ship.

The types of assistance considered are:

  • Protection from imports or substitutes (E.g., tariffs)

  • Direct government assistance (E.g., subsidies, grants)

  • Indirect government assistance (E.g., assistance to upstream or downstream industries)

  • Support from industry bodies, such as associations and trade groups

Financial Benchmarks

Understand average costs for industry operators and compare financial data against key ratios and financial benchmarks broken down by business size.

Cost Structure

Here you’ll find a breakdown of the average expenditure costs in an industry and its corresponding sector. All costs are represented as a percentage of total industry revenue.

Hover over the chart to see the percentage for each cost and click through the years at the bottom of the chart to compare the cost structure over the past four years.

The Cost Structure Benchmarks chart.

Along with the cost breakdown chart, we examine the most relevant trends impacting industry costs so you can understand what’s driving this data.

Financial Ratios

Available in the US, UK and Canada, Financial ratios are comparative measures used to assess the financial health of the industry. We provide four years’ worth of ratios for Liquidity; Coverage; Leverage; Operating; Cash Flow and Debt Service; Assets and Liabilities.

We also provide a breakdown of these ratios for small (<$10m), medium ($10-50m), and large (>$50m) industries.

More historical data for this section is available in the downloaded version. Read Downloadable Content for more information on downloading report sections.

Key Ratios

Here you’ll find the most important financial ratios for benchmarking a company against industry averages.

Key Statistics

This chapter contains the raw industry data found throughout the report.

Industry Data

This section lists key historical, current and forecasted data you can use in your own analyses. The data in this section is available as numerical values and annual growth rate percentages.

Key Success Factors

This page lists the Key Success Factors found throughout the report.

Call Preparation Questions

The Call Preparation Questions page helps you get the most out of client calls by giving you categorized questions based on up-to-date industry data and trends.

Our Call Prep Questions are broken down into Role Specific, External Impact and Internal Issues questions. These categories are further broken down into subcategories, allowing you to quickly find the questions you need to have successful client calls with any client in any industry.

Archived Reports

The Archived Reports page allows you to view and download past versions of Industry Research Reports for an industry.

Related Industry Products

Found at the bottom of the left-hand navigation bar of an industry report, this section shows other IBISWorld products for an industry.

For additional questions regarding Industry Reports, please contact your Client Relationship Manager. If you don’t have an IBISWorld account, contact us to learn more about our membership options.

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