Research Guides: MBA 6315 Brand Audit Project (O'Meara): MBA 6315 Brand Audit Project (O'Meara)

Researching a Company's Brands and Offerings

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.
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
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

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.

Discovering Brand Building Activities

Articles:

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

Encyclopedia of Major Marketing Campaigns
ISBN: 9780787630423
Online. An annual publication that profiles important marketing campaigns of the 20th century. Search using product, brand, or company names for information on marketing campaigns and branding for a particular product or company.
Encyclopedia of Major Marketing Strategies
ISBN: 9781414499215
Online. A continuation of Encyclopedia of Major Marketing Campaigns (1999 and 2007), this new volume expands its international coverage through its 100 essays covering some of the top global and emerging brands that appeared from 2010 to 2013. Search using product, brand, or company names for information on marketing campaigns and branding for a particular product or company.

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

Videos:

Films On Demand
Secrets of Branding is a series on how brands are created, and what contributes to the success or failure of a brand. Watch the entire series, or just the segments that interest you! Find it by typing in secrets of branding in the search box.

Thousands of exclusive educational videos from top producers, segmented into easy-to-use clips
Unlimited, simultaneous, 24/7 access, in class or off site

iPad, Android, PC, and Mac friendly

New content added monthly, with more than 1,000 new titles added a year

Closed-captioning and interactive transcripts for thousands of titles

Authenticated HTML embed code that allows direct access to videos from within Canvas, or other LMS

Dynamic citations in Chicago, MLA, and APA styles

Note: There is a known issue creating custom segments, using filters, and paging through results after executing a search. If you run into these issues, please access Films on Demand on-campus:

On-Campus Link

Tracing Company Strategies and Objectives

Company and Industry Information and Performance:

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
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
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

Product/Brand Information and Performance

The Making of a Name by Steve Rivkin; Fraser Sutherland; Jack Trout
Call Number: HD 69.B7 R58 2004
Print book. "In this indispensable guide, the authors share the secrets of successful brand names--how they've indelibly stamped cultures around the world; who makes them; why they're made; and how they're compiled, bought, sold, and protected."
Encyclopedia of Consumer Brands by Janice Jorgensen
Call Number: HF 5415.3 .E527
Print book.
An older source, but gives good history and background on how some major brands were started and developed.

Media Usage and Marketing Expenditures

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

Digital Marketing Spending Survey: Charts and figures for digital marketing spending by major industry categories, and breakdowns of how the spending is allocated. This is a summary of findings from the survey.

Marketing Charts: This web site compiles data from other companies about consumers' interactions and habits with media including TV, Internet, social media, direct mail, and more. Data also shows the success of these campaigns, as well as ranking top media for advertising. Scroll down the screen to see charts arranged by most recent date first, search by media category, or do a keyword search for your topic.

State of the News Media: An annual report by Pew Research Center that examines how consumers use news media, what formats they prefer, and more!

For specific media cost information, go to the web site for the major media outlet you are interested in (ex. Wall Street Journal)

Brand Exploratory

Researching Consumer Opinion on Brands:

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

Interbrand
View articles, reports, and lists of best brands in a variety of countries and industries.

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

Plus, article web sites listed above.

Researching Consumer Opinion on Brands: Primary Research (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:

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!

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

MBA 6315 Brand Audit Project (O'Meara)

Reference Librarian/Business Liaison

Ask A Librarian: Penny

Penny's Office Hours Fall 2021