On the consumer side, a company could draw up a marketing list of people who live in an area with a certain median income.

Rosenbaum said he's amazed that local companies are making business decisions having done little or no research on consumers or competitors.

"You just don't have an idea of your business," he said. "How can you create a marketing plan? You can't plan for growth if you don't know your competition. Otherwise, it's just a crapshoot."

ReferenceUSA is not the only proprietary database of business and consumer information available. Competing services exist from Dun & Bradstreet, Acxiom Corp. and Equifax, among others.

Rosenbaum said he was exposed to ReferenceUSA while earning his doctorate at Arizona State University, and sought access when he came to teach at UH in 2003. That year, he received a $15,000 grant from Retail Merchants of Hawaii to license ReferenceUSA, primarily as a teaching tool.

The grant will pay for three more years of access, but Rosenbaum said he'd like to continue the service beyond that. His idea is to charge businesses for reports or find a sponsor to make the service available free through the UH library system, which Rosenbaum said can't afford the license.

InfoUSA through its Web site sells individual reports (the list of retail bakeries in business for at least five years on O'ahu with a good or excellent credit rating costs $118). But the company limits licensing its database to government agencies and members of the Special Libraries Association, including news organizations and law firms.

ReferenceUSA is available through many state library systems, but InfoUSA said it hasn't been successful in attempts to sell the service to Hawai'i's state library system.

The only other public licensee of ReferenceUSA in the state is the Hawai'i Business Research Library, a statewide organization based on Maui and operated through a partnership between the U.S. Small Business Administration and UH-Hilo.

Pat Diaz, administrative assistant of the research library, said the organization dropped the service for about six months last year because of budget constraints, but reinstated the license after realizing how useful the database had become since first subscribing to it in 2003.

"We realized we really need this back," she said. "It's a really big, helpful tool."

Diaz said the library, which routinely assists entrepreneurs with starting or expanding businesses, has fielded requests to find suppliers of various products on the Mainland, size up competitors and even tally the number of employees working on Front Street in Lahaina.

The ReferenceUSA database is also available free to members of Retail Merchants Hawaii, a trade association with about 200 members.

Carol Pregill, association executive director, said the trade group has received many inquiries about tapping into the database, but members have been slow to use the service. Still, Pregill said she sees a lot of value in the service, especially for smaller businesses.