Research Guides: BUS 302 Marketing Plan Project (O'Meara): BUS 302 Marketing Plan Project (O'Meara)

Assignment One: Industry Selection

When researching an industry, consider the following:

Is your industry a segment of a larger industry? For example, men’s shoes may be part of the larger segment called apparel, which may be part of the larger industry of retail. You will want to look at your industry from the smallest segment to the larger industry.
What kind of industry are you studying? Is it service, manufacturing, retail, etc.?
Do you know the SIC and NAICS codes for your industry? These are classification codes assigned to industries, and some databases still use them for searching for industries. It can be handy to know what the codes are for your industry of interest.

Starting with Google? Might be good for...

Professional associations (San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, American Bakers' Association, etc.)
Web sites for companies within your industry
Some articles, fact sheets, statistics
Pricing, logos, images

Overviews and Data

IBISWorld
IBISWorld is a great database for information on US industries. Use the reports here to find out more about the products, services, location, and size of your industry, how your industry is performing, what companies are involved, what it takes to succeed, and what challenges your industry faces.

Classifying Industry Reports at the 5-digit North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), IBISWorld Industry Reports are at the granular level covering industry-specific titles from the popular to the not so popular. Each Industry Report is some 35-50 pages in length with abridged, 6-page Executive Summaries also available.

On-Campus Link
Statista
Great database for data and reports on all kinds of industries, companies, products, and consumers. IMPORTANT: To find even more information in Statista, once you are looking at a table of data, on the right side of the screen click on "Release" and then Source Link. This will take you to the original data source and may lead you to even more useful information!

Categorized into over 20 market sectors, Statista provides business customers, researchers, and the academic community with direct access to relevant quantitative facts on agriculture, finance, politics, and many more areas of interest.

Sources of information include market researchers, trade publications, scientific journals, and government databases.

On-campus link
Passport
Use Passport for global industry information. Excellent for industry statistics and market research.
Tips for Passport industry search:
In search box, type a simple keyword like “snacks.”
On the next screen, you can choose from the Statistics column, or the Analysis column, and you can filter by geography, categories and topics, or lifestyle themes.

On-Campus Link

News and Trends

Professional Associations:

These are great for finding out what people in the profession or industry area are reading and thinking about, as well as current trends. For many associations, some of the content is freely available, while other content is available to members only. To find industry associations, try these tools:

Encyclopedia of Associations
This ebook allows you to search for associations that are based in the United States, in a variety of categories. Use the pull down menu on the first screen that says, "Select Series" to choose the Encyclopedia of Associations.

Association Directory
This is a freely available web site that allows you to search for professional and industry associations by region, category, state, and more.
Google Search
A quick search on a keyword for your industry (food service, finance, transportation, hospitality, etc.) plus the words association or organization will give you a list of web sites you can view.

Trade Journals and Articles

Business Source Complete
This is the world's definitive scholarly business database, providing the leading collection of bibliographic and full text content. As part of the comprehensive coverage offered by this database, indexing and abstracts for the most important scholarly business journals back as far as 1886 are included.

In addition to the searchable cited references provided for more than 1,200 journals, Business Source Complete contains detailed author profiles for the 25,000 most-cited authors in the database. Journal ranking studies reveal that Business Source Complete is the overwhelmingly superior database for full text journals in all disciplines of business, including marketing, management, MIS, POM, accounting, finance and economics.

Additional full text, non-journal content includes financial data, books, monographs, major reference works, book digests, conference proceedings, case studies, investment research reports, industry reports, market research reports, country reports, company profiles, SWOT analyses and more.

On Campus Link
ABI/INFORM Collection
One of the world's most comprehensive business databases, and the only one with the full text of the Wall Street Journal, ABI/INFORM Collection makes a smart starting point among our many business resources.

Launched in the early 1970s, ABI/INFORM remains the gold standard when it comes to business research databases. ABI/INFORM Complete’s massive content set—which includes important full‐text journals and much sought‐after titles from the business press as well as key trade publications, dissertations, conference proceedings, and market reports—will help today’s researchers resolve tomorrow’s problems.

ABI/INFORM Complete includes all content found in ABI/INFORM Global, ABI/INFORM Dateline, ABI/INFORM Research, and ABI/INFORM Trade and Industry. It also includes ABI/INFORM Archive, which offers a deep backfile of many of the most important business journals of the last century.

Through agreements with some of the world’s most prestigious publishers—including Cambridge University Press, Dow Jones & Company, Emerald Group Publishing, Dun and Bradstreet, Palgrave MacMillan, the Financial Times Group, and the Economist Intelligence Unit—ProQuest provides access to hundreds of key business titles.

Key ongoing full-text journals include:

Journal of Economic Literature
Journal of International Business Studies
Organization Science
Journal of Economic Perspectives
Academy of Marketing Science Journal
American Economic Review
Accounting Review
Supply Chain Management
MIT Sloan Management Review
China Quarterly

Key ongoing full-text periodicals include:

Wall Street Journal
Financial Times
Economist
SmartMoney
Fusion
Fusion allows you to search, in one place, the majority of the library’s books, articles, videos, etc. It includes all the materials in our library catalog Ignacio, as well as the content of the majority of our many databases.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS:
Does Fusion include everything the library has?
No, but it includes so much of what the library has that it will almost always be a good place to start a search.

When would Fusion not make sense as the first place to search?
Some examples:

If you’re interested in finding only books, or a specific book title, then our library catalog Ignacio might be a more appropriate place to begin.
If you’re looking specifically for statistical data, or encyclopedia/dictionary entries, or images, it would be better to use databases devoted to those specific types of information.
If you're looking for a specific Journal title, you should use our Journal Finder.
I’m very proficient using the subject-specific databases in my field. Is there any reason I should use Fusion?
Because Fusion will have such broad coverage, it may locate relevant materials published in other fields that you wouldn’t otherwise find in a subject-specific database.

So then why would I want to choose a subject-specific database anymore—can I just use Fusion instead?
Fusion is not replacing any of our subject-specific databases. These databases offer valuable advanced searching capabilities tailored to their subject areas.

On-Campus Link

Assignment Two: Market Opportunity

Assignment Three: Final Written Plan: Marketing Strategy & Mix

SOURCES FOR CONSUMER/TARGET MARKET DEMOGRAPHICS, BEHAVIORS AND TRENDS RESEARCH:

TOP PICKS:

Data.census.gov
Data.census.gov is the new platform to access data and digital content from the U.S. Census Bureau. It replaces the American FactFinder website, which was retired in 2020.

The earliest data on data.census.gov will be from the 2000 Census. American Community Survey (ACS) Data will not be available prior to 2010 with the exception of the 2009 Comparison Profiles. All ACS data, including 2005 to 2009 data, are available in the Census Data API.

For detailed information about the new platform see this guide.
Passport
Country, industry, and consumer statistics and market research: Passport offers integrated access to internationally comparable statistics, full-text market reports, comment from expert industry and country analysts as well as thousands of sources of further information.

On-Campus Link
Statista
Easy to use statistics search engine with access to more than a million statistics and facts.

Categorized into over 20 market sectors, Statista provides business customers, researchers, and the academic community with direct access to relevant quantitative facts on agriculture, finance, politics, and many more areas of interest.

Sources of information include market researchers, trade publications, scientific journals, and government databases.

On-campus link

Claritas: My Best Segments
This web site groups consumers into general categories, with brief descriptions and demographic information. Use the Zip Code Look-Up to get information about consumers in a particular area in both descriptions and graphs. There are three categories of information for consumers; PRIZM, P$YCLE, which describes the financial status of consumers, and ConneXions, which describes the level of technology use and connectivity of consumers. Use Segment Details to view descriptions of all of the consumer segments on the web site. Use the Narrow Segments button in the middle of the screen to search for consumer groups by age, income, and other categories.

OTHER GOOD SOURCES:

American Time Use Survey
Data on how American consumers use their time. Scroll down to view topics and tables of data.
Consumer Expenditure Survey (U. S.)
Statistics and reports on consumer expenditures, unemployment rates, and much more.
Think with Google
This free resource contains analysis done on trends, digital communications, consumers, and marketing by using data from Google searches. presented in visuals and interactive reports. Can do keyword searching or browse topics.
Facebook IQ Insights to Go
Provides consumer insights in the form of data, reports, and other information. Search by Region, People, Industry, or Marketing Platform, and these can be combined in a search. Information is from interactions on Facebook platforms.
Pew Research Center
A non-partisan research group that collects and presents data, opinions, and reports on American attitudes, activities, and trends. Browse by topic, or type in your search.
United Nations Demographic and Social Statistics
Includes information on demographics of countries, income and consumption, and more. Use the Data pull down menu and select UN Data to search by country.
US Census Bureau International Database (IDB)
Just choose your country from the drop down menu, then choose your year. Click submit. You'll get birth rate, population, and more!

Citing Your Sources

Whenever you do research, you will need to cite the information sources that you use. Most business scholars use APA style. Here are some tools that can help you with this task:

Gleeson Library's guide to citations: How? Why? When?

APA 7th Edition Citations for Business Sources
An excellent guide to using APA 7th edition style for popular business sources. Scroll through the guide to find an example for the business source you are using in your research. Compiled by librarians Naomi Schemm, Marcia Dellenbach, Zachary Grisham, Marianne Hageman, Natalia Tingle, Matt Trowbridge, and Amanda Wheatley
Citing Business Databases in APA: Michigan State University Guide
This guide was created to help with citing some common business databases
Citing Business Databases from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro
This guide has some additional business database examples in APA style.
MLA Business Citations: Youngstown State University
Scroll down the page to see citations for specific business web sites, reports, and databases cited in MLA style.
Purdue OWL
Our favorite style guide web site is the OWL from Purdue University.

RefWorks
RefWorks allows users to create personal databases to manage, store, and share the information citations/references. Users can automatically insert references from their database into their papers and generate formatted bibliographies and manuscripts in seconds. Create an account using your USF email address.

See our RefWorks Guide for information about creating accounts, using add-ons, and accessing user guides.

Getting Help!

There are several ways to obtain assistance with your research. Read on!

You have your very own librarian! She is Penny Scott, and you can contact her for help.

Her contact information is: email: plscott@usfca.edu * phone: 415-422-5389

It is best to email ahead, or make an appointment, to make sure she is available! Appointments are available virtually via Zoom, or in person, and are great for groups or individuals. If you don't see a time that works for you, email Penny.

If Penny is not available, or any time you need help, you can always get help, just Ask a Librarian!

You can also take a look at our Research Guides on many topics!

Gleeson Library

BUS 302 Marketing Plan Project (O'Meara)

Reference Librarian/Business Liaison

Penny's Office Hours Fall 2021

Assignment One: Industry Selection

Overviews and Data

News and Trends

Professional Associations:

Trade Journals and Articles

Assignment Two: Market Opportunity

Company Information

SOURCES FOR COMPANY RESEARCH: PRIMARY SOURCES (INFORMATION COMPILED BY YOU AND YOUR TEAM):

Assignment Three: Final Written Plan: Marketing Strategy & Mix

SOURCES FOR CONSUMER/TARGET MARKET DEMOGRAPHICS, BEHAVIORS AND TRENDS RESEARCH:

TOP PICKS:

OTHER GOOD SOURCES:

Citing Your Sources

Getting Help!

BUS 302 Marketing Plan Project (O'Meara)

Assignment One: Industry Selection

Overviews and Data

News and Trends

Professional Associations:

Trade Journals and Articles

Assignment Two: Market Opportunity

Company Information

SOURCES FOR COMPANY RESEARCH: PRIMARY SOURCES (INFORMATION COMPILED BY YOU AND YOUR TEAM):

Assignment Three: Final Written Plan: Marketing Strategy & Mix

SOURCES FOR CONSUMER/TARGET MARKET DEMOGRAPHICS, BEHAVIORS AND TRENDS RESEARCH:

TOP PICKS:

​OTHER GOOD SOURCES:

Citing Your Sources

Getting Help!

OTHER GOOD SOURCES: