Looking ahead at the new year, the food and beverage industry is slated to experience both new and continued trends. While overall retail sales will continue to climb, some dynamic shifts will also occur. To find out some of the projected upcoming trends for 2014, we reviewed The Future of Food Retailing in the U.S.: Shopper Insights and Market Opportunities, 4th Edition, a report published by leading food and beverage industry experts Packaged Facts.

As we say goodbye to 2013 and ring in the new year, it's important to look ahead at what we can expect throughout 2014. Continuing on the ideas of the 2013 trends, the pet industry should experience slight, but steady, growth across the board in in the upcoming year, according to pet industry experts and MarketResearch.com publisher Packaged Facts. In Packaged Facts' report U.S. Pet Market Outlook, 2013-2014, they project a wide variety of industry trends that will gain momentum next year.

This past week, MarketResearch.com gave a facelift to its premier corporate research platform, Profound. Business intelligence has a new look with Profound's fresh new user interface. But, we’re not doing it just to look pretty. The new design revamps the navigation and functional menus and cleans up many of the pages that our users have told us were misleading or outdated.

Today's fastest selling seasonal merchandise quickly becomes the "stuff" on tomorrow's sales racks. We’ve all passed the shelves full of drastically marked down Halloween candy, Christmas decorations and stuffed Easter bunnies. Overstock like this results in lost revenues, takes up precious real estate and marks a missed opportunity for merchants hoping to capitalize on the hottest items of a holiday season.

The mark of any successful business is growth. No matter how small or large a company may be, you must always strive to improve, to grow, to endure. But, that's certainly easier said than done, right? The trick is to focus your market research strategy around questions that are geared towards fueling your business growth. So, which questions really cut to the heart of true expansion? Here are a few suggestions to get your strategic wheels turning:

By the year 2017, nearly 2.5 billion people across the globe will be engaged in social networking. That's nearly a third of the earth's current population. So, regardless of how trivial people once considered social media to be, the truth is the social realm has become a truly viable resource for the business world. With this rapid progression of usage and its evolving reputation, it's becoming increasingly important for market researchers to take advantage of the unique networking opportunities social platforms provide. But because of preconceived notions, many professionals are at a loss when it comes to actually harnessing social media's capabilities in an advantageous way. Before this can be done, market researchers must understand social media in terms of practicality and application. So, how can social networking actually benefit your market research efforts? There are several things to consider when determining this.