ECON 1311
Principles of Microeconomics
WEB PROJECT

An Online Course Guide

Use the databases below to search for information on your market.

Each market  will require a different search strategy. Use all four sources below to gather information on your market/industry, key companies, rankings, market share, trade news and data on product supply and demand.

Contact me with any questions about finding sources.

To get started:

• Search Business Source Complete and see if you can find a NAICS code for the industry/industries that supply your market. Use that to narrow a search of the trade literature, and to view industry profiles.
   
• Use Business & Company Resource Center to look up industry overviews, business rankings, and market shares.
   
• Use Lexis-Nexis Academic to search trade literature (Business > Industry & Market) by keyword. Hoover's (Business > Company Profiles) will give you lists of competitors.
   
• Standard & Poor's NetAdvantage to search industry surveys, sub-industry reviews. You can also get at market/industry information by looking up individual companies.

To fully explore your markets, you will need to go beyond these sources. Other excellent sources include:

• Government documents. Often found on the open web, content from government sites is generally authoritative. Includes data & statistics sources, such as The Statistical Abstract of the U.S. and U.S. Census; federal agency sites (e.g., USGS, USDA) can be easily searched through Firstgov.gov.
   
• Quest, the Library Catalog. Excellent book sources abound, and these will in turn lead you to other sources.
   
• Communication & Mass Media Complete. For many retail products, advertising trade content will fill you in with data and projections.
   
• General news sources. The wider scope of newspaper coverage can give helpful overviews, and direct you to narrower sources.
   
• Government Regulation of Business page. Information about government regulations of your market will often be included in the trade literature you research--this page will help you go deeper.

Always:

• Research in stages, and build on what you learn. Don't try to do it all at once!
• Be creative: experiment with all the features of the databases; try new keywords; look in sources you might know from other courses or assignments.
• Ask a librarian for help or advice whenever you want. 
• Cite your sources.

Things to Avoid:

• Wikipedia. You can do better.
• Quoting data from ad campaigns, industry associations, companies uncritically.  When possible, verify data sources by checking the original. Many companies and industries pay private firms to conduct research on their markets, then quote selectively from that data.

Key Databases by Contents:

From the library's homepage (lib.trinity.edu), go to Databases.

Business Source Complete:

Trade Publications

                        Industry Profiles (broad data)

                        NAICS/Industry Codes

                        Company SWOT analyses (brief, with general market growth data)

Business & Company Resource Center:

Business rankings (e.g., Top 10 Manufacturers of Pet Food, 2000)

                        Market Share (e.g., Top Dog Food Brands (Wet), 2006 )

                        Industry Overviews (Business Encyclopedias)

                        Trade articles

                        Trade Associations

                   Communication & Mass Media Complete

                        Advertising trade content, from trade publications like Advertising Age and
                        Broadcasting & Cable

Standard & Poor's NetAdvantage

Industry Surveys:

            Industry Profiles

            Comparative Company Analysis

                        Company Profiles        

Lexis-Nexis Academic

Trade news: Business > Industry & Market > enter terms, search.

     Company Profiles: Business > Company Profiles

                        Ownership hierarchy

                        Company history

                        Competitors

                        Key numbers