Research Guides: BUS 406 Entrepreneurial Management (Hudson): BUS 406 Entrepreneurial Management (Hudson)

Company Research

SOURCES FOR COMPANY RESEARCH: SECONDARY SOURCES (INFORMATION COMPILED BY OTHERS):

Company's web site: Start with the company’s web site; look for Investor Relations, About the Company, etc. There may be a CEO message, or you can also find mission statements, values, financial information, and other information to help you analyze the company’s strategies.

Mergent Online
Detailed company information including 15 years of financial statements.

On Campus Link
PrivCo
Registration Required. See "more" for access information. PrivCo.com is a source for business and financial research on non-publicly traded corporations, including family-owned, private equity-owned, venture-backed and international unlisted companies.

PrivCo currently has profiles for over 850,000 firms, 20,000 investors and 100,000 private market deals, and is adding information and in-house analysis daily. Whether doing company, investor, M&A, venture capital funding, or private equity research, PrivCo is searchable by advanced criteria in all categories.

The first time you access PrivCo, you will be asked to create an account. Register with your academic email address (@usfca.edu). With your own account, you will be able to save your searches and track companies in your personalized watchlist. Your account provides 1,000 profile views, 1,000 exported records, and 500 deal views per year.

Access to PrivCo is available to current USF students, faculty, and staff only. PrivCo is to be used for academic, non-commercial use only, and all usage is archived.

On-Campus Link
Nexis Uni
Replaces LexisNexis Academic.

More than 15,000 news, business, and legal sources from LexisNexis—including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790.

National and regional newspapers, wire services, broadcast transcripts, international news, and non-English language sources.

U.S. Federal and state case law, codes, regulations, legal news, law reviews, and international legal information.

Shepard’s Citations for all U.S. Supreme Court cases back to 1789.

Business news journals, company financial information, SEC filings and reports, and industry and market news.

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
International Directory of Company Histories
Provides histories of companies that are a leading influence in a particular industry or geographic location. For students, job candidates, business executives, historians and investors.

EDGAR Company Filings
This is the web site of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In the US, public companies must file information with the SEC. A 10-K is the annual filing a company must make. Search by company name (or part of a name), ticker symbol, or search by industry to create a list of companies. If you find reports in EDGAR, that means the company is public.

Don't forget books, you can sometimes get great overviews of a company in a book. Search your company in our library catalog.

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

Interviews

Opinion Polls

Surveys

Observations

If you need help creating a survey or poll, see this guide on using Google Forms. It shows how to create, send, and view results from surveys you create.

Market Situation

SOURCES FOR INDUSTRY DESCRIPTIONS AND OVERVIEWS: SECONDARY SOURCES (INFORMATION COMPILED BY OTHERS):

IBISWorld
Information on over 700 US Industries in the US economy.

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
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

SOURCES FOR INDUSTRY NEWS: THESE SOURCES CAN BE USED FOR COMPANY, PRODUCT, AND BRAND NEWS TOO!:

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
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
Nexis Uni
Replaces LexisNexis Academic.

More than 15,000 news, business, and legal sources from LexisNexis—including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790.

National and regional newspapers, wire services, broadcast transcripts, international news, and non-English language sources.

U.S. Federal and state case law, codes, regulations, legal news, law reviews, and international legal information.

Shepard’s Citations for all U.S. Supreme Court cases back to 1789.

Business news journals, company financial information, SEC filings and reports, and industry and market news.

On Campus Link

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

Interviews

Opinion Polls

Surveys

Observations

Marketing Strategy and Mix

American FactFinder
Official data from U.S. Census of Population and Housing, the American Community Survey, or the Economic Census.

Search by a street address to determine Census geography and related population and housing data or search in a Quick Table, Demographic Profile, or Geographic Comparison Table for known geographic areas. Advanced users who need to manipulate large data sets will wish to use the Data Sets option. Static (see Map It when creating tables), reference, or thematic mapping options are also available. For more information, including full-text publications, see the U.S. Census Bureau home page.

Coverage of the Census of Population and Housing begins in 1990. All data from the American Community Survey, which began in 1996, is available. The Economic Census coverage begins with 1992 data.
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

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 Explorer to view descriptions of all of the consumer segments on the web site. Use the links on the left side of the screen to search for consumer groups by age, income, and other categories.

OTHER GOOD SOURCES:

Consumer Expenditure Survey: Bureau of Labor Statistics: US Labor Department
Statistics and reports on consumer expenditures, unemployment rates, and much more.

Experian Marketing Forward Blog: Freely available data, infographics, and reports on consumer behavior and trends.

Pew Research Center
A non-partisan research group that collects and presents data, opinions, and reports on American attitudes, activities, and trends.

Time Use Survey: Bureau of Labor Statistics: US Labor Department
Data on how American consumers use their time.

United Nations Demographic and Social Statistics
Includes information on demographics of countries, income and consumption, and more. Use the pull down menu for Demographic and Social Statistics. Then in each section, click on the Statistics link.

US Census Bureau International Data Base (IDB)
Statistical tables of demographic, and socio-economic data for 227 countries and areas of the world. Select data by country and year, then choose topics by using the pull down menu that says, Select Report.

Product/Brand Information and Performance

YOUR COMPANY'S WEB SITE

Press releases, media, products, company history, and other information

COMMERCIALS AND ADVERTISEMENTS

YouTube
Search for your brand to find ads and commercials

Encyclopedia of Consumer Brands
Print book. Call number: HF 5415.3 .E527
An older source, but gives good history and background on how some major brands were started and developed.

Encyclopedia of Major Marketing Strategies (2013)
Online reference source.
Search using product, brand, or company names for information on marketing campaigns and branding for a particular product or company.

Encyclopedia of Major Marketing Campaigns (2007)
Online reference source.
Search using product, brand, or company names for information on marketing campaigns and branding for a particular product or company.

Market Share Reporter
Online reference source.
Provides the market share for many companies within an industry, shown with pie charts and graphs.

The Making of a Name: The Inside Story of the Brands We Buy
Print book. Call number: HD 69.B7 R58 2004

Brandz
Lists of brand rankings and information about global brands. View the entire report, a chart, or an infographic.

Interbrand
Search Knowledge for papers, articles and studies on brands and branding, search Best Global Brands, to see brands rated, articles, and more.

RESEARCHING CONSUMER OPINION ON BRANDS: PRIMARY SOURCES (INFORMATION COMPILED BY YOU AND YOUR TEAM):

Interviews
Polls
Questionnaires
Surveys

Want to use a quick and easy survey method to reach your potential customers? Try Google Forms. Quick how-to guide.

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:

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.

Create an account using your USF email address.

If you do not want to use your USF email address:

on campus: create an account with any email address.
off campus: use the link above and this invitation code: 5951-1639
Please note, even though you will be prompted for a "university email address," you may enter any email address.

(You can still use the Old RefWorks) Group Code: RWUSanFrancisco

New RefWorks Guide
Legacy RefWorks Guide

Getting Help!

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

The School of Management has a library liaison named 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 call or email ahead, or make an appointment, to make sure she is available!

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

Gleeson Library

BUS 406 Entrepreneurial Management (Hudson)

Reference Librarian/Business Liaison

Ask A Librarian: Penny

Penny's Office Hours Spring 2020