Top 9 Business Information Sources
Business Librarian
Bias in Academic Publishing
Overview of Business Resources
Why Was This Guide Created?
This guide was created to help you find the best business information: company data, financial information on public companies, competitor information, SWOT analysis, and customer demographic data. This guide has all the databases you can use for your BUS 346 (Intro to Marketing) assignments. It is a terrific list of resources to find data for your startup company and for BUS 310 (Intro to Entrepreneurship). This guide is for everyone in need of business and market information.
Why These 9 Databases?
These databases are all subscription resources paid for by Cal Poly's library and your tuition. Global Market Information Database is paid for by the library, Oraflea College of Business, and the College of Agriculture, Food, and Environmental Science. High quality business and market research is only available through expensive subscriptions. Access to these resources are limited to students, faculty, and staff at Cal Poly. The top nine databases were chosen by Orfalea faculty as the best sources of information for the class BUS 346. As your business librarian I believe these are the top sources for business information that we subscribe to and pay for.
Bias in Business Resources and Data Collection and Publishing
Some of the business resources listed below publish their own content (Global Market Information Database, MRI Medimark), while the rest of the databases purchase publishing rights from other content creators/providers. These database companies may be biased in a wide variety of ways, as to what they write about, how they do their research, and what content they license and publish. One hedge fund database calls out these biases in this paper: https://nilssonhedge.com/database-info/databaseinfo/database/database-biases/
Top 9 Business Information and Sources with some Citation Examples
- First Research This link opens in a new windowINDUSTRY RESEARCH
Use First Research to find parts of your SWOT (strength, weakness,opportunity/threat) analysis for your industry. For example, if you are researching electric cars, you'd search for an industry report on automobile manufacturing.
First Research users must start at Mergent Intellect
https://www.mergentintellect.com/index.php/search/index
and scroll down to First Research, click on it. Enter any email address at the "Access First Research" screen and click submit.
CITATION for First Research reports
Chicago Style:
Footnote:
3 First Research, "Coffee & Tea Manufacturing," July 2020, accessed September 2021.
Bibliography:
First Research. "Coffee & Tea Manufacturing." July 2020, accessed September 2021. - Mergent Intellect This link opens in a new windowCOMPANY & COMPETITOR RESEARCH
Use Mergent Intellect to find information on private companies. This can be useful for your SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis and other types of business and competitor analysis. - Mergent Online This link opens in a new windowCOMPANY & COMPETITOR RESEARCH
Use Mergent Online to find information about publicly traded companies. Use Mergent Online to find a list of competitors of the company, and to find financial information on a public company, or a public company competitor. . - Statista This link opens in a new windowSWOT ANALYSIS, INDUSTRY, COMPANY, COMPETITOR, SOCIAL MEDIA USE, DEMOGRAPHIC DATA
Statista is a terrific resource to find a little bit data on just about anything --broad but shallow. This data comes in the form of charts, so you'll have to do your own analysis as to why it is important for your assignment. For SWOT analysis, search for Industry Reports. Excellence source of information for BUS 346, BUS 310, and all marketing and ag marketing classes. - Passport (Euromonitor) This link opens in a new windowINDUSTRY, COMPETITORS, MARKET SIZE, MARKET SHARE, RETAIL ENVIRONMENT
Use Passport to find fantastic reports on a wide range of retail industries. Also use it to find really great competitor lists, market share, sales, and forecast data. This is an international database, so it includes reports from many different countries. One of the best resources for information and data on consumer retail. Awesome reports on consumer packaging too! This database is co-sponsored by the Orfalea College of Business and the College of Agriculture, Food, and Environmental Sciences. - MarketResearch.com Academic This link opens in a new windowINDUSTRY, COMPETITORS, MARKET SIZE, MARKET SHARE, DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
Use MarketResearch.com to reports on your industry, on competitors, market size, market share, and parts of your SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, threat) analysis. Some reports are older, so be sure to check the date it was published. - MRI Simmons This link opens in a new windowDEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
Use MRI Mediamark to find out what people do (with their free time) and what people buy (how much and what type of things). MRI Mediamark is used to look deeply at your customer, and includes a lot of information about them--the social media they use (for your media plan/spending), websites and apps they use, traditional media they look at (magazines/TV shows).
First-time users need to create an account WHILE ON CAMPUS, using their Cal Poly email address if possible . Use the Register link at the login screen. Cal Poly's VPN recommended if you are currently off campus. Accounts may expire--if you receive an error message indicating a possible expired account, use the Register link to re-create your account. - ABI/INFORM Complete This link opens in a new windowINDUSTRY, COMPANY, COMPETITORS, PRODUCT INFO, COMPANY STRATEGY (CEO interviews)
ABI/Inform is an article database. That means it includes articles on businesses, industries, products, and competitors. The types of publications include newspapers, trade journals (which cover industry news), and some market reports. Use this database to search for articles to help with your business analysis, to find interviews with executives who work for the company to find out their strategies, and to search for product information. - Business Source Premier This link opens in a new windowINDUSTRY, COMPANY, COMPETITORS, PRODUCT INFO, COMPANY STRATEGY (CEO interviews)
Business Source Premier includes articles from newspapers, magazines, trade publications about industries, and scholarly journals. Use this article database to search for information about companies, your competitors, product launches, and for business analysis.
Advanced Google Search - Not counted as a database for BUS 346
Extra Resource! Sorry, Advanced Google search isn't "counted" as a resource in your BUS 346 Into to Marketing class, but many students use it for business research. Advanced Google searches most everything, while the databases have a constrained set of data/article/reports/content within their 'bucket.'
Original Google VS Advanced Google Search
There are two main ways of searching Google: what I call "original Google" is the classic simple page with one search box to enter in your search. The other way is super awesome and helpful: Advanced Google search.
Advanced Google helps you to search faster and better by narrowing your search to particular types of published stuff on the internet.
Advanced Google search allows you to narrow your search by Adobe PDFs. What this means is that when searching you can only get published reports and information in PDFs. So you don't get blogs, random stuff in you list of search results.
To search for PDFs on your topic, start at this page: https://www.google.com/advanced_search
Put in your key words or phrases at the top, then scroll down the page to get to "file type," and chose Adobe Acrobat PDF.and search.
For example I'm interested in market research on cat treats. So I entered my search words on top, the phrase "market research" and then chose Acrobat as the file type. My search looks like this: cat treats "market research" filetype:pdf
NOTE: The underlying computing that goes into searching the internet and delivering results is biased. Learn more about that bias:
Bias in Search Engines And Algorithms: https://libguides.scu.edu/c.php?g=887434