Research Guides: BUS 496 Entrepreneurship Team Project (Nguyen): BUS 496 Entrepreneurship Team Project (Nguyen)

Researching Social or Consumer Needs Within the Community

Social Issues Databases

Opposing Viewpoints
"Pro" and "con" arguments on controversial issues. Includes full-text materials drawn from print series such as Opposing Viewpoints, Current Controversies, At Issue, Contemporary Issues Companion, and Gale Information Plus series. It also provides full-text periodicals, newspapers, journals, pamphlets, primary source documents, statistics, images, web sites, and student research tools.
CQ Researcher
CQ Researcher provides award winning in-depth coverage of the most important issues of the day. Our reports are written by experienced journalists, footnoted and professionally fact-checked.

Full-length articles include an overview, historical background, chronology, pro/con feature, plus resources for additional research. Graphics, photos and short "sidebar" features round out the reports. Shorter "Hot Topics" articles provide a solid introduction to subjects most in demand by students.

On-Campus Link

News

Access World News
Through nearly 7000 news sources, find diverse global, local, regional, and national perspectives on topics related to controversial issues, the environment, health, education, science, the arts, literature, business, economics, criminal justice, and more.

Sources include a variety of current and retrospective news media: newspapers, newswires, broadcast transcripts, blogs, periodicals, and web-only content.

Also included are the following Access Modules: Business News, U.S. Newswires, Military, Government, and Defense, and Acceda Noticias. Content is easily searched and sorted through an intuitive, map-based interface.

Access World News includes many California News Sources including the current San Francisco Chronicle.

On Campus Link
Academic Search Complete
Academic Search Complete, designed specifically for academic institutions, is among the most valuable and comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals.

In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 12,500 journals and a total of more than 13,200 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc.

This scholarly collection offers unmatched full text coverage of information in many areas of academic study including: animal science, anthropology, area studies, astronomy, biology, chemistry, civil engineering, electrical engineering, ethnic & multicultural studies, food science & technology, general science, geography, geology, law, materials science, mathematics, mechanical engineering, music, pharmaceutical sciences, physics, psychology, religion & theology, veterinary science, women's studies, zoology, and many other fields.

Academic Search Complete offers critical information from many sources unique to this massive collection. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1887, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format. Searchable cited references are provided for more than 1,400 journals.

On Campus Link

Statistics

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

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.

Look for web sites for organizations and associations that address the global problem you are researching. To do this, use the search engine of your choice, and simply type in your topic and the word organizations (ex. unemployment and organizations).

Industry Descriptions and Overviews, Plus Potential Competitors

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
PrivCo
Private company information! PrivCo.com is the premiere source for business and financial research on non-publicly traded corporations, including family-owned, private equity-owned, venture-backed and international unlisted companies.
Registration Required! 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.

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
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

Industry News and Trends

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

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.

Market Share and Statistics

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

Market Share Reporter
Provides the market share for many companies within an industry, shown with pie charts and graphs. Each entry features a descriptive title; data and market description; a list of producers/products along with their market share. To search: Use the search box on the right that says, "Search within publication." You can search products, companies, brands, industries.

Researching Potential Customers

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

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.
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 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.
ESRI Zip Code Lookup
Use this free collection of ESRI data to find psychographic, demographic, and behavioral information on consumers by U.S. zip code. To search: Click on Start Exploring, then type in your zip code. Then click on Segment Description, Read More, and Click for More Details to get behavioral and psychographic consumer information.
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.

Researching How Things are Made

How It's Made: Discovery Science: Science Channel

How Everyday Things are Made: Stanford University

How Products are Made

Modern Marvels: History Channel

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:

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.

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!

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, and are great for groups or individuals.

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 496 Entrepreneurship Team Project (Nguyen)

Reference Librarian/Business Liaison

Ask A Librarian: Penny

Penny's Office Hours Fall 2020