According to the U.S. Census Bureau, our nation will welcome its 300 millionth citizen in October. What is unclear is whether that 300 millionth will be welcomed as the youngest member of the next generation, or as one of the 42 million members of the fastest growing U.S population segment, the Latino/Hispanic community.

In any event, No. 300,000,000 will join a demographic snapshot of a larger picture that will be analyzed by marketers and consultants in an ongoing effort to keep us up-to-date on the buying patterns and preferences of different age, income and ethnic groups. They'll also keep retailers and e-tailers busy thinking up new ways and means for getting busy moms, Hispanic homebuyers, aging baby boomers and income-earning Generation X-ers into the store, and new products into their homes.

Last month, Consumers Union released Shop-Smart, a non-advertising consumer magazine for women, and Home Shopping Network began testing remote control shopping for its 'techno-savvy core female demographic.' Lowe's and Home Depot have realized the buying power of lady do-it-yourselfers and are attracting new customers with female-friendly store layouts, seminars and new product lines.

Now the big box stores are focusing on serving the booming Hispanic population. Oct. 1 is the deadline for compliance with Lowe's new bilingual signage mandate, part of a company-wide directive that, since last fall, has required bilingual copy on all vendor packaging and effected an in-house redesign of Lowe's proprietary packaging.

Large corporations and big box retailers budget for demographic reports, trend analyses and psychographic studies of their current and potential customer base. But when it comes to allocating advertising dollars or analyzing local traffic and spending potential, where can a small independent turn for information?

Up until now, an affordable birds-eye view of your local customer base was available once every 10 years courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau. Last month, for the first time ever, the Bureau released the first two of four releases from its 2005 American Community Survey, a new data collection tool specifically designed to collect and provide communities across the country with a more current look at how their demographics are changing. And the information is just a few clicks away.

The ACS portal on the Bureau's Web site lets users manipulate data results to create reports by age, race, income, home value, commute time to work, occupation, education level, average household size, owner and renter-occupied units, and marriage status, all of which can be segmented by state, congressional district, county and population area of 65,000 or more. A fairly robust engine allows for a quick return of results, which may be viewed, printed or downloaded to a computer file in several formats. Housing occupancy, value and ownership data is planned for release on Oct. 3 and selected population profiles will be released Nov. 14.

To try it for yourself, go to www.census.gov, and (1) on the left side of the Web page, click on American Factfinder; (2) under the heading Getting Detailed Data, click Get Data; (3) under American Community Survey, choose 2005 ACS for a list of available reports. For example, Ranking Tables, Median Age produces a list that puts Maine on top with a median age of 41.2, and Utah at the bottom with 28.5.

When I look at tables for my community of Guilford County, North Carolina, I learn that there are 129,653 men and 135,567 women; 51,985 unmarried men and 48,922 unmarried women aged 15 and over; 18,148 widows and 3,997 widowers; 6,563 women gave birth in the prior year, and 1,188 of them were between the ages of 35 and 50.

While you're at the Census Bureau Web site, check out the County Business Patterns reports which list establishments, employees and payroll by industry, for counties and zip codes, and can provide a quick snapshot of your competition. The most current report was released in June, with numbers taken in 2004.

I searched North Carolina's County Business Patterns report, scrolled down to Guilford County, NAICS code 442 (furniture and home furnishings retailers) and learned that of 185 such retailers in the county, 85 were home furnishings stores, and of those, 43 had less than five employees, and four are located within my zip code.

To access your state's County Business Patterns report, click on the heading Business & Industry in the middle of the page. Under the subheading, Programs with national and subnational data, click on any year to view the available data.

Based on recently released ACS results, the country's Hispanic population is projected to make up one-fourth of the nation's total population by 2050.

The Census Bureau's new American Community Survey provides annual updated information about the nation's changing population. Without the ACS, this type of information, previously gathered just once a decade, would not be available until 2012.