Business Librarian
Your Assignment
For BUS 463 you'll need to find the following information:
1. Economic conditions:- GDP, interest rate, inflation, unemployment rate, commodity pricing
2. Government regulations:: Tax Policy, Employment laws, minimum hourly rate, Environmental Law, Trade Restrictions, Tariffs
3. Competitions: Porter's Five Forces: Industry competition, bargaining power of customers, bargaining power of suppliers, threat of substitution, and threat of new entrants
4. Industry factors: A five-year forecast of the industry and key trends. An assessment of the key drivers that will impact this industry moving forward. A five-year growth forecast of all key industry statistics
Finding Economic Conditions and Government Regulations -- Searching for Government Data
- GDP, Consumer Spending, Industries, Inflation and MoreThe US government's Bureau of Economic Analysis is a great place for finding those big indicators our economy.
- Tax PolicyThe US Department of the Treasury has a Tax Policy section which is super helpful for finding current information.
Competitions: Porter's Five Forces
- Mergent Online This link opens in a new windowCOMPETITOR RESEARCH
Mergent Online is a database of pubilcly traded companies. Use Mergent to research your publicly traded competitors. Once you find your company look under the Reports tab to, find Annual Reports/10K, customizable Mergent Reports (company profile information in one document), and Broker Research Reports (analyst reports from Investext).
Under the Company Financials tab, you can use the dropdown menu to view data over a specified time period (between 3-year and All Available Years) . You can easily export the data to Excel.
To compare your publicly traded company to other publicly traded firms, or just to compare competitors, use the how to in this link:
https://guides.library.pdx.edu/mergentonline/sidebyside - Mergent Intellect This link opens in a new windowCOMPETITOR RESEARCH
Mergent Online has information on privately held companies. Use Mergent Online to research your privately held competitors. Note: unless the competitors are large, there may not be much data on them. - ABI/INFORM Complete This link opens in a new windowCOMPETITORS, NEW ENTRANTS, BARGINING POWER OF SUPPLIERS, THREAT OF SUBSTITUTION
Use ABI/Iinform, a database of newspaper and magazine articles, to find information on your competitors, new entrants to the market, and stories on suppliers. - Business Source Premier This link opens in a new windowCOMPETITORS, NEW ENTRANTS, BARGINING POWER OF SUPPLIERS, THREAT OF SUBSTITUTION
Business Source Complete is a a database of newspaper and magazine articles, Us it to find articles on your competitors, new entrants to the market, and stories on suppliers. - Passport (Euromonitor) This link opens in a new windowCOMPANY INFO, MARKET SHARE, RETAIL TRENDS, PACKAGING, INTERNATIONAL
Global Market Information Database publishes reports on consumer goods, from mass market, like Wal-Mart or Target to luxury goods like Prada and Chanel. In addition to the company and product reports they also publish articles on emerging trends in retail. See below for more stuff!
Industry data: multi-country relational database of market and category sizes, market shares, distribution patterns, sales forecasts and other measurements relevant to each sector.
Country reports: in-depth analysis reports on both developed and emerging national markets.
Global reports: assessing the key issues affecting international market performance, with a focus on important developments by product sector and big picture competition strategy.
Company profiles: analytical profiles of the top international players across industries, compiled in a standardized format for cross analysis.
This database is co-sponsored by the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences and the Orfalea College of Business. - 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 industry and competitor analysis.
Be sure to go through your Cal Poly portal to access this resource. - Statista This link opens in a new windowINDUSTRY, COMPANY, COMPETITOR, DEMOGRAPHIC DATA, DATA OF ALL SORTS!
Statista is a terrific resource to find a little bit data on just about anything. 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. Try different words in your search to make sure you're finding all the data you need:
Industry Factors
- First Research This link opens in a new windowINDUSTRY, FORECAST DATA
Use First Research to find reports on your industry. Be sure to click on Browse Industry Profiles below the search box to scan for your industry if searching doesn't work.
Important NOTE!!!! First Research users must start at Mergent Intellect and click through to First Research. Enter any email address at the "Access First Research" screen and click submit.
Included in each report are:
Industry Forecast, Critical Issues, Business Challenges, Business Trends, Industry Opportunities. Executive Insight Financial Information - Statista This link opens in a new windowINDUSTRY, FORECAST DATA
Use Statista to find data on your industry. All data comes in chart form, and can be exported to an Excel spreadsheet. - Passport (Euromonitor) This link opens in a new windowFORECAST DATA
Find forecast data in Global Market Information Database product reports.
