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Suggested Sources for Company and Industrial Analysis
Business Source Premier
Search for periodical information on company name, industry, product, etc.
Search on company name in one box, and another word or concept in another box…. Concepts like “strategy” or “strategic” or some other word related to your research interests. Business Source Premier is the best place to search and browse popular, trade, and scholarly academic journals. Use the "company profiles" option to search for useful MarketLine company overview reports by company name. Also, be sure to find the industry overview for you topic in this database. They will include the Porter's Five Forces.
Google Scholar
Indexes scholarly literature. Strong in the areas of medicine, engineering, the sciences, and business. Provides relevancy rankings based on the citation patterns of the articles. Sources are linked to Library electronic holdings via "Find It." This is your first best place to search for scholarly journal articles. Look up industries, and related sub-topics, products, or company names and sub-topics.
IBIS provides Industry market research reports on over 1,300 U.S. industries, plus Canada Industries, China Industries, and Global Industries, Each IBISWorld report includes:
You can find reports by browsing by industry sector, by SIC or NAICS codes, or or simply searching by keyword. This will be your main source for industry overviews.
Mergent Online
Excellent source for 15 years of financial data, company financial ratios, annual reports and other financial data. Be sure to locate company annual reports and download the "Mergent Report" for your company. See the Compare Companies Video.
MorningStar
More excellent financial data, and make sure to look at current and archived Analyst Research.
NetAdvantage
Good company information, and be sure to look at the broad industry overviews. These are excellent.
ProQuest News
Proquest News is our best source for newspaper information with archives going back over 30 years. This contains the full text of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Use ProQuest News to update the information you will find in your industry overviews.
Search for articles in these titles directly via these links:
BusinessWeek
Economist
Financial Times
Fortune
New York Times
Wall Street Journal
How to get automatic news alerts
Google Alerts:
Here is where students can go to set up a Google Alert. If they want to look for news, I suggest they change Result Type to News.
For ProQuest News here are the basic steps:
1. Go to the database ProQuest News from the UMD Library website (Databases tab)
2. Perform a search. To search for a specific organization, enter in a search term and change the drop down menu to Company/Organization (ORG).
3. After search results are returned, and you are happy with your search terms, click on Create Alert.
4. Create an alert following the four easy steps.
5. Wait for your alerts to arrive.
Passport Database from Euromonitor
This is our best source for international marketing information. Here are narrative reports and statistics on consumer products, consumer lifestyles, and retailing structures of 50-60 major nations, including the United States. 4,000 international company reports can be found here too. Use the keyword in the search box located at the top of the web page. Search for companies, products, and industries.
Value Line
Provides the current relative rating for performance and safety together with estimated yields, the latest earnings, dividends and p/e data, guidance on current investment policy, analysis and forecasts of the national economy and the stock market. Value Line offers views on the economy and the stock market as well as on stocks of special interest. This is a highly regarded and unique source of financial information. Search by company name. HOW TO READ A VALUE LINE REPORT
Westlaw News contains more than 4,900 news and business information publications. This is a major database for news and trade publications. This is a key source of information.
Other Suggested Websites
How to Compare the Financials of One Company to Another
Comparing Companies -- Financial Ratios
Sources of Ratios
Our featured Financial Ratio Database
BizMiner offers industry financial analysis benchmarks for over 5,000 lines of business and industry market trends on thousands more. Their market analysis reports are available at the national and local levels down to the zip code. BizMiner is a great resource to use when developing business plans, or for any sort of entrepreneurship initiatives where you need to measure peer performance in an industry. Types of reports:
Citing Your Sources.
Be sure to provide complete citations for your sources in your bibliography. These links and services can help:
Launch Pad's How to Cite Electronic Information (APA)
Purdue OWL: APA Formatting and Style Guide
UMD Writer's Workshop (provides one-on-one advice on citation.)
If you have questions or are encountering problems, please contact me.
Last Update: February 17, 2020
