MGT 002 - Introduction to Business (Prof. Turner)

Company research

Search for information relevant to points 1-3 (part III in your "Research paper guidelines").

1. A detailed description of the company and its products or services

2. A brief summary of financial information showing the firm’s performance, including revenues and profits for the last five years if available (..)

3. A brief description of the industry as a whole including identification of major competitors to the firm

Hoover's

• Search for your company.
  • in the company's record screen follow the menu (left side, vertical) links to "Full Overview," "Summary" (of financial data), "Historical Financials," and "Competitors." Do not miss the "Competitive Landscape" and "Comparison Data" links (your company vs. competitors vs. industry vs. market).

Business and Company Resource Center

• Search for your company. Note that you can limit your search to the parent company.
  • in the company's record screen, note 2 menus: vertical, on the left side, which contains links to articles arranged by subject (these will be useful for points 4 to 8) and the horizontal menu consisting of a series of tabs. Explore the "Rankings" and "Products" (areas not well represented in Hoover's).
  • explore the content under the "Industry" tab. If applicable, start with industry marked as "primary."

Standard and Poor's NetAdvantage

• Search for your company.
  • in the company's record screen, note all the choices under the "Company profile" menu (left side screen) - explore these for additional information for points 1 and 2.
  • for relevant and up-to-date information about your company industry, open the "Industry Surveys" PDF file. In the table of contents on the first page note the "Industry trends" chapter. Consider checking the "Comparative company analysis" as well and selecting elements relevant to your paper.

SWAT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats)

Search for information relevant to points 4-7 (part III in your "Research paper guideliness").

4. Strengths the firm currently possesses and ways it achieves competitive advantage

5. Weaknesses of the firm as it is currently operating

6. Opportunities that the firm may face in the next few years and possible strategies for taking advantage of those opportunities and
7. Threats to the firm that exist or may appear in the next few years and possible strategies for coping with those threats.

Most likely, while researching points 1 to 3, you have already formed an idea about your company's performance and gathered materials supporting it. To find more, consider the following:

If you did not browse through articles about your company in the Business and Company Resource Center, do it now.

• Search for your company
  • in the company's record screen, note on the left side of the screen the vertical menu which contains links to articles arranged by subject. Consider, in particular, the "Financial data" and "Strategy and planning" categories (but browse the other ones as well).

ProQuest

• A good search strategy is to combine search for your company (limit the search by using the drop-down menu to switch from "keyword" to "Company/org") with either the SWAT analysis terms or words like "performance," "future," "strategy," "analysis," "forecast," etc. Alternatively, you can search for the company and limit your search to a document type (again, by using the drop-down menu) like feature or cover story.

Value Line

• Search for your company
• Do not be intimidated by the amount of data included in one single page. Read the "Analyst commentary" (text in the lower part of the page) where the analyst explains why the forecast is what it is. The forecast includes detailed financial estimates (in italics) in the main body or table of the page as well as projections for the share price in the left side top corner of the page.

Concept coverage

8. One concept from each of the following subject areas covered/to be covered in class, specifically a) Management, b) Ethics, c) Entrepreneurship, d) Marketing, and e)Accounting/Finance.

Again, you probably noted relevant information while researching points 1 to 7. To find more:

ProQuest

• A good search strategy is to combine search for your company (limit the search by using the drop-down menu to switch from "keyword" to "Company/org") with terms related to your chosen concept. For example, if you are interested in ethics, you can search for terms like "corporate citizen*", "community relations", "social responsibility", "philantropy", "environment" or "litigation". If you are interested in marketing, you might want to search for information on "consumer*" or "demographic*", "advertising campaign", or "market* strategy".

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