Background Information for understanding your industry, product, and client
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"Who is my customer and who are my competitors? What about products?"
Trade Magazines | Newspapers/Press Releases | Company/Industry Directories
Trade publications provide information about specialized industry, company, and product developments. Trade publications are aimed at professionals within the industry. For advertisers, they provide a window into trends, new products, government, and regulatory concerns.
Trade Magazines : Advertising
The most frequently used advertising trade magazines are available on the Web, in the Libraries, and more fully and historically (back to the mid 1980's) in the business periodicals database, ABI Inform.
- AdWeek [Library CAT] & AdWeek on the Web
- Advertising Age [Library CAT] & Advertising Age on the Web
- MediaWeek [Library CAT] & MediaWeek on the Web
- Market Share Reporter
An annual compilation of reported market share data on companies, products, and services compiled from a variety of trade and industry publications.
MEDIA PLAN HINT! Do a Google search on "media plan of the year" to see the Adweek and MediaWeek mid-June issues on award-winning media plans, including general and background information.
Trade Magazines : Every Profession and Trade You Can Imagine
Many, many other trade industry publications are important sources of information about competitors and industry developments.
- ABI/Inform
An excellent source for the full-text of many trade publications. - TableBase
Indexes the statistical tables/charts that appear in trade publication articles and provides the full-text of the table/chart and the article context.
TableBase and ABI/Inform complement one another. By focusing on article subjects and statistical table/chart content you can often locate hard-to-find nuggets of information using these two databases together.
- LexisNexis Statistical
An index of Industry association statistical publications, which may be useful for some types of research. Most are not full-text in LexisNexis Statistical, but are available on microfiche in the Social Sciences Library (SRI microfiche library).
Newspapers provide important business/company/industry trends. National newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times are important. But so are local newspapers where a company may be headquartered. For example, the Kansas City Star may be the best newspaper to research for news about Hallmark or the Los Angeles Times might be best for the film industry or for information about Disney Theme Parks. For example, recent issues of the Los Angeles Times carried a lengthy investigative journalism story on the increased number of accidents on Disney Theme Park rides due to cost-cutting approaches to managing safety inspections of the rides and attractions — a media plan might need to respond to this type of situation.
- LexisNexis Academic
- America's Newspapers (NewsBank Full-Text Newspapers)
- ProQuest Newspapers (major newspapers only)
To determine which databses cover particular newspapers, use Find E-newpapers.
C. Company/Industry Directories
- Hoover's (the only Company-specific source)
a database containing a summary overview about industry and companies. - The Business Library's Web pages and tutorials:
(e-reference)