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Business

Access QC Libraries' business research resources.

Campany & Industry Research

Researching a Company, you need to consider:

  • The type of company you are looking at
  • The type of information about the company that you are interested in

"Is the company public or private?" "Is the company U.S. or international?"

The type of a company suggests how much information is available about the company.

 (Source: Kubo & Ottaviano, 2016)

Researching an Industry, you need to consider:

Industry analysis is also known as competitive analysis. The analysis of a given industry provides a company with a big picture of the overall industry.

Industry research can answer the following questions:

  • Who are the dominant companies in the industry and what are their market shares?
  • What products and services are already available and what are those products and services lacking?
  • What is the overall competitive condition?
  • How would the business be best positioned to compete in the industry?
  • How would it sustain competitive advantages in the long run?"

 

Reference

Kubo, H., & Ottaviano, T. J. (2016). Company and industry research : strategies and resources (First edition.). Business Expert Press.

Public vs. Private Companies

"Is the company public or private?" "Is the company U.S. or international?" Those questions will determine how much information is available about the company.

  • Public Companies' ownership can be freely publicly traded; private companies are not open to the general public.
  • U.S. regulations state that any company that is publicly traded must submit informational filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
  • According to U.S. regulations, private companies with more than 500 owners and more than $10 million in assets must submit informational filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
  • The filings include a company's such information as fiances, organizational structure, executives, history, subsidiaries, etc.
  • The most commonly referred filings are the Annual Report (10-K) and the Quarterly Report (10-Q).

U.S. vs. International Companies Companies

The SEC form 20-F is an annual report for foreign companies traded on U.S. exchanges

Is the research object (company/organization) public, private, or nonprofit?

Find company/organization information or profiles from Library Databases and open sources:

Identify the industry of a company

  • Industry describes "all of the businesses making a particular product or providing the same service."

["Industry." Encyclopedia of Environment and Society, edited by Paul Robbins, vol. 3, SAGE Publications, 2007, pp. 927-928. Gale eBooks.]

  • SWOT analysis:

"a means of evaluating the internal and external factors that impact an organization in order to formulate business strategy."  Strengths & Weaknesses (internal), Opportunities & Threats (external).

["Swot Analysis." Encyclopedia of Management, 8th ed., vol. 2, Gale, 2019, pp. 1064-1068. Gale eBooks.]

Note: Not all companies have a SWOT analysis report.

  • The Following library databases contain SWOT analyses:

Search MarketLine Reports via Business Source Complete:

  • Search MarketLine Company Profiles via Business Source Complete:

On the top of the database interface, hover your cursor on "More" to find and click on "Company Profiles" >> type the company name in the search box and click on the "Browse" button >> Click on the link to MarkerLine Report after the company name (under the column of "PDF Complete Report."

  •  Find the most up-to-date SWOT in a standalone format (outside of the company profile report). Compare the dates to see which SWOT is more recent.

On the right side of the database interface, under "Publication Type," choose the "SWOT Analyses" >> Enter the company name in the search box and click "Search" button >> Locate the most recent "SWOT Analyses" for the company company in the list and click on its title to retrieve it.

Search Tip:

1. Browse "Most Searched Companies"
2. Click on the "Browse All Companies" button >> type a company name or ticker symbol into the search box and click on the Search icon >> Choose/click a company from the list of suggestions to retrieve a company profile.
** If a SWOT report is available for the company, it will appear on the company profile page. Click the "Read full SWOT Analysis" button to access the report.

Search tips for finding information about industry:

  • Look up company information to clearly define an industry
  • Perform keyword searches with related or alternative terms, such as "medical apparel" or "apparel" from a company's name "BeneFIT Medical Apparel" (Databases may have different terms for the same or similar industry.)
  • Search within multiple databases - ABI/INFORM Collection,  Business Source Complete, Gale Business: Insights, MERGENT Online,  and Nexis Uni . Each database may cover different industries, with some overlap.
  • Search by Industry codes, such as NAICS or SIC codes. Note: Industry codes are NOT uniform across databases. You may need to adjust your search as using different databases.
  • Look up trade or professional associations, which often produce and publish helpful reports and data.

 

Identify and locate potential competitors in an industry

  • "Is there room in the market for your new business?"
  • How are the other companies doing? (look at estimated sales)
  • Mergent Online database can help identify a company's competitors, both public and private.
  • Gale Business: Insights and Nexis Uni can help identify public company's competitors.

Industry Classification Codes

SIC/NAICS Codes are numerical classification systems to help identify industries and organize business companies/entities within the same industry.

NAICS is a 6-digit coding system to categorize industries, "the standard used by Federal statistical agencies in classifying business establishments for the purpose of collecting, analyzing, and publishing statistical data related to the U.S. business economy." NAICS was adopted in 1997 to replace the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system "to allow for a high level of comparability in business statistics among the North American countries."

SIC is a four-digit classification system developed in the 1930s and revised through 1987. SIC codes are still used by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and many business databases.

Companies - Recommended Databases

  • MergentOnline
    • Includes Dun & Bradstreet Private Company Data
    • Click the box on the first search page to limit a search to private companies.
  • Business Source Complete
    • Use to find articles and company profiles. Search by company name.
    • The "Company Information" component provides detailed company information for more than 1.1 million of the world’s largest public and private companies. Data includes financials, subsidiaries, products, employees, industry information and more.
  • Mergent Online
    • To find international companies, deselect the domestic check boxes before running your search. Depending on the disclosure regulations for each country, the amount of data may be exactly like the US company data you can find.
  • Business Insights: Global
    • Find case studies, in-depth statistical data for international industries/companies
    • Use to compare global economies, countries and industries.
    • Search by company name to find articles and company profiles.
  • AnnualReports.com
    • Provides free access shareholder reports for many publicly traded corporations
  • Mergent Online
    • A suite of extensive financial information on US and international public companies.
    • Mergent Online provides digital images of annual reports to shareholders, complete text of SEC filings, equity research reports, global historical stock prices, corporate and municipal bond data, and industry reports.
    • Also includes Dun & Bradstreet Private Company Data.
  • EDGAR
    • Open access website of the Securities & Exchange Commission's Electronic Data Gathering and Retrieval (EDGAR) system.
    • Search for a company's SEC filings. Includes all financial, new issues, mergers, joint venture, insider trading etc.
    • Popular Types:
      • 8-K: Released any time a company has a 'significant event'. Includes things like hiring a new director, M&A announcement, earnings releases, legal disputes etc.
      • 10-K: Annual report filed with the SEC. This contains financial data executive compensation, business activities etc. The 10-K contains all information - good and bad - with no 'spin' on it.
      • 10-Q: Quarterly financial reports.
      • DEF 14A: Proxy filing. Submitted prior to annual meeting of shareholders, it contains information such as director backgrounds, committee structures, corporate governance and will have executive compensation information if left out of the 10-K.

Standard & Poor's industry surveys. [QC Library currently does not own this journal]
Standard and Poor's Corporation.
1973 - 2012

  • Current issues are now produced online only by CFRA Research
  • Within the survey there are often rankings/figures but each has tables in the rear of the report that give much financial information by company by financial statement.
  • Historical issues back to 1970s are limited to the print copies.

Company Information

It can be helpful to consider what type of company you are seeking information on:

Public Companies

  • Trade stocks or securities on an exchange and
  • Are typically required to disclose information about their operations and performance, this means a lot of information is available in the databases and on company websites.

Private Companies

  • Not always required by law to disclose information for public inspection, therefore they can be harder to research.
  • Resources to research private companies include some of our databases, news sources and company websites.

Subsidiary

  • A subsidiary company is one that is owned by another company.
  • Financial information on a subsidiary is sometimes not available and it is necessary to read the reports of the parent company.

Nonprofit organizations

  • A non-profit organization is a group organized for purposes other than generating profit and in which no part of the organization's income is distributed to its members, directors, or officers.
  • Can fall into a number of categories including associations and not-for-profit unlisted public companies.

Government entities

  • A governmental entity is that which is closely affiliated, generally by government ownership or control, with State and local governments.

SIC/NAICS Codes are numerical classification systems to help identify and organize like companies within the same industry.

NAICS Search The North American Industry Classification system (NAICS) is the standard used by Federal statistical agencies in classifying business establishments for the purpose of collecting and analyzing statistical data related to the U.S. business economy.

  • NAICS was adopted in 1997 to replace the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system

SIC Manual SIC codes and their descriptions at the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) website.

         Search for company by name or stock ticker to get to the "Company Dossier" feature.

Finding Articles

Find industry/company reports and management and leadership articles:

  • ABI/INFORM Collection: management research database with in-depth coverage for over 3,535 publications, including more than 2,495 available in full text.
  • Business Source Complete: scholarly business database, providing bibliographic and full-text content. Content includes peer-reviewed journals and leading business publications, case studies, company profiles, industry reports, market research reports, and trade journals.
  • Emerald Insight: over 400 peer-reviewed business journals, with full-text scholarly articles, case studies, and literature reviews. Very strong for both management and leadership research.
  • ScienceDirect: leading scholarly database for the social sciences. Includes full-text articles in management and leadership. Includes full-text for Leadership Quarterly (1990-present).

See more Business Databases.

Multi-disciplinary databases:

  • OneSearch
  • Search across nearly all of the Library's holdings, including books, e-books, scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers DVDs, and streaming videos. Great for cross-disciplinary research.
  • Google Scholar
  • Google's search engine for academic research that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines.

 

Finding Books & Videos

  • WorldCat.org is a world catalog of thousands of libraries worldwide, including books, manuscripts, computer data files, maps, computer programs, musical scores, films and slides, sound recordings, and videotapes.
  • Interlibrary Loan requests may be made directly from OneSearch.