Monday, June 30, 2008

Finding the competitors

A very effective way to discover who else might be making soft drinks is to use the Census website.

Click on the middle of page where you will see "NAICS"... This is the North American Industrial Classification System. Every business has one or more of these codes.

Search for terms like "soft drink" or whatever your group decides.

You can then take the codes that your group agrees on and use them as keywords when doing a company search in Lexis Nexis or Mergent Online. Remember, Lexis will have private (businesses that are not traded on a stock exchange, like Hank's for example) data as well. Mergent is only public companies, like Coca-Cola.

Falvey Library's Question Center

If my team and I are taking too long to reply to a question, or if you'd rather ask someone else, be sure to take advantage of our new Question Center.

Trade Publications

Many of you are looking for the full text of trade publications, so as a reminder, the links are under the "external environment" section on this page and my favorite sources are:

Business Source Premier
ABI/Inform
Business & Industry

Let me know if you have any trouble searching these products.

Friday, June 27, 2008

Hank's Gourmet Beverage's - Finding the profile with Lexis - Nexis

1. Goto Lexis - Nexis
2. Click on Business
3. Select Company Profiles
4. Enter "Hanks" in the company name, enter "beverage" in the search terms and then select "US Private Company Reports" from the source section.

You should get a Hank's Beverages file that was last updated on June 9, 2008

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Mintel Reports

See how to sign up, login, and use the Advanced Search feature of Mintel Reports:

Mintel Basics

Comparing Companies with Mergent

Mergent Online is another great tool for comparing companies against your own customized set of variables.

This short video will walk you through the basic steps. HINT: use the ticker symbol, Mergent has no private company data and the name search is very precise and may overlook your company if you've entered the name incorrectly.

Lexis-Nexis Academic - Company Information

Lexis Nexis has both public and private company information. It is also home to patent searching, legal research, newspapers from around the world, and other valuable bits and parts.

Download this 2:00 minute video to see just how simple it is to get company data using the new Lexis-Nexis Interface.

GMID How to video

GMID, the Global Market Information Database, is vast in it's content. Use for finding statistical data, demographic data, country reports, and company and industry studies.



For a clearer and larger version of the video, download this file. Be patient, it takes a moment to complete.

GMID: Getting Started

Welcome

This page is a resource to students in the Summer Business Institute. All of the resources discussed here can also be found on the library's website with the exception of any resources that are located on the free and public web.

I want to advise and/or remind everyone that the library has a team of four professional librarians who are ready to assist you with any aspect of your research for this or any other class that you might be taking.

SBI Presentation Slides

Download the PPT file here