Accounts
Marketing Strategy Resources
Course Specific Resources
Library Session Feedback (For the end of session)
Course Page Note: There are many resources below. For upcoming assignments (Situational assessment, SWOT analysis, and Market Segmentation,) Business Source Premier will be a great place to start. It offers SWOT information, includes a Marketline Report for each public company and provides excellent industry profiles. It also identifies many different market segments (geography, category, market size, competitors and share of market, etc.). Open Marketing Resources Course Page- for Alumni.
Standards used to classify business establishments for the purpose of collecting, analyzing, and
publishing data. Knowing your business's classification code can make it much easier to locate
industry information. Many of the electronic resources below will also display the NAICS or SIC
codes along with other information for your chosen company.
2. News & Articles
Quick research note: Company reports and general industry overviews sometimes will not be specific
enough to address certain questions. This is where trade presses can be of substantial value. Each
database below has the ability to filter for necessary trade publications. Be sure to put quotes around
a specific phrase you are looking for, such as "product development". Or if you'd like to search for
every variation of a word, truncate your search and add an asterisk, such as with "product*"; this will
search for product, producing, production, etc.
Business Source Premier provides full text for more than 2,300 journals, including full text for more
than 1,100 peer-reviewed titles.
LexisNexis - Nexis Uni (try searching in Business Dossier)
Nexis Uni provides access to 5,000 publications on a wide range of topics. Business resources also include company financials, SEC Filings and reports, directories, and accounting journals.
ABI/INFORM Complete includes full text journals and newspapers from the business press as
well as key trade publications, dissertations, conference proceedings, and market reports.
3. Company Comparison & Market Shares
Quick research note: Company annual reports can often be gained by visiting the company's online presence.
It will give the company's view of it's current position in the industry, but can still be a very comprehensive and
valuable angle. 10-K reports can give a more detailed picture and are a required filing publicly traded companies
must make with the governments' Security and Exchange Commission each year.
Hoover's Online is an Internet-based suite of information resources that enables in-depth company and
industry research.
Mergent Online provides U.S. and international company data, global company financials, annual reports,
executive profiles, and industry reports. Excellent for creating customized reports where two or more
companies are compared.
Since 1934, the SEC has required disclosure in forms and documents. In 1984, EDGAR began collecting
electronic documents to help investors get information. The SEC's new system requires data disclosure
— the next step to improve how investors find and use information.
Business resources also include company financials, SEC Filings and reports, directories, and accounting
journals. Also, contains LexisNexis Company Dossier--profiles of over 43 million companies worldwide
and hundreds of industry and trade periodicals.
Data-Planet contains over 18.9 billion data points from over 400 databases sourced from 70 public and
private organizations. Able to analyze data at sip-code level, examine consumer trends, explore trade
statistics, and numerous company statistics and financials.
4. Bench-marking-- Can help to Identify important trends, strengths,
weaknesses for your company.
BizStats-- Provides some industry statistics, including financial ratios and benchmarks for industries
(such as industry profitability risk data; Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet and Financial Ratios. They also
offer more detailed industry reports--UWO does not currently subscribe to this service.
Retail Benchmark Trends-- From Retail Owners Institute. Key ratios for 55 retail/restaurant segments. Site
uses 6 ratios to give a "snapshot" of the different aspects of the retail industry.
5. PESTEL & Environmental Scan
globalEDGE -- Created by the International Business Center at Michigan State University (IBC),
globalEDGE™ is a knowledge web-portal that connects international business professionals worldwide
to a wealth of information, insights, and learning resources on global business activities.
PESTEL Analysis-- A six part framework used to help one analyze variables in the macro-environment
which may have an impact on an organization.
Economist Intelligence Unit-- Provides analysis of the most important developments in politics, economic
policy and the economy, as well as forecasts of the main political and economic trends
--Use the second ProQuest link. Then search for a particular country on the next screen.
A snap-shot taken every five years: number of establishments, sales, receipts, revenue, shipments, annual
FRED Economic Data-- "This site offers a wealth of economic data and information to promote
economic education and enhanced economic research. The widely used database FRED is updated
regularly and allows 24/7 access to regional and national financial and economic data." Taken from
About page. Includes such information as employment, consumer price index, gross domestic product
data. It also allows one to create visuals such as graphs to communicate data.
OECD iLibrary--A highly comprehensive online resource on the world economy, society, education and
environment containing all books and papers published by the OECD since 1998.
The Five Whys-- "By repeatedly asking the question “Why” (five is a good rule of thumb), you can peel
away the layers of symptoms which can lead to the root cause of a problem." Source: iSixSigma
CIA WORLD FACTBOOK-- In order to explore other countries, select another from the drop down
menu on the top right.
The US Census-- The US Census Bureau provides access to data about the United States,
Puerto Rico and the Island Areas.
SOI Tax Stats - Business Tax Statistics-- Numerous statistical "programs" (aka, research data operations),
which can be browsed by sector and topic.
Federal Reserve--Monetary Policy-- Data Page-- Numerous data sets that cover some of the following:
Bank Assets and Liabilities, Bank Structure Data, business finance, etc.
Bureau of Labor Statistics-- "The BLS is an independent national statistical agency that collects,
processes, analyzes, and disseminates essential statistical data to the American public, the U.S.
Congress, other Federal agencies, State and local governments, business, and labor. The BLS
also serves as a statistical resource to the Department of Labor." From Federal Register
World Values Survey -- The World Values Survey is a global network of social scientists studying
changing values and their impact on social and political life, led by an international team of scholars,
with the WVS Association and WVSA Secretariat headquartered in Vienna, Austria.
Pew Research on Internet and SmartPhone Penetration -- From Pew Research Center
World Bank Open Data -- At the World Bank, the Development Data Group coordinates statistical and
data work and maintains a number of macro, financial and sector databases. Working closely with the
Bank’s regions and Global Practices, the group is guided by professional standards in the collection,
compilation and dissemination of data to ensure that all data users can have confidence in the quality
and integrity of the data produced.
International Monetary Fund -- "The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an organization of 189
countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international
trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world.
**Finding Financial Priorities**
If you are having trouble finding information on financial priorities, be sure to search for different keywords
in your company's 10K report. For example search for priorities or priority. Then once you learn of a specific
set, you can do additional searches for those items in the databases above.
6. Critical Subscription Based Resources (which you may have access to at your
Future Employer)
IRi-- "Information Resources, Inc. develops big data and predictive analytics solutions. The company
offers market performance and strategy, forecasting, consumer and shopper intelligence, in-market
execution and analytics, media, and data management software." From Bloomberg.
KANTAR-- "Kantar is home to some of the world's leading research, data and insights brands." KANTAR
conducts extensive brand and marketing communications research.
EUROMONITOR--"The world's most comprehensive market research on consumer products, commercial
industries, demographics trends and consumer lifestyles in the USA."
Nielsen-- Studies consumers throughout the world to identify current trends and habits in the marketplace.
7. References
APA 7th ed. citation for business sources
Schemm, N., Dellenbach, M., Grisham, Z., Hageman, M., Tingle, N., Trowbridge, M., & Wheatley, A. (2020). APA 7th ed. citation for business sources. https://bit.ly/APA7business
Internal Assessments
| ABI/ Inform | Business Source Premier | Hoovers | Data Planet | Mergent | Edgar | Google Search | Fred | Univ of Michigan | |
| Company Profiles | R | R | |||||||
| Company History | A | A | |||||||
| Company Financials | A | A | |||||||
| Recent Company News | |||||||||
| Stock Analyst Reviews |