Library Guides: IET 317: Appiah-Kubi: Company Research & Competitors

Company Research

When building a business plan it is often necessary to research suppliers, retailers, and key companies within an industry. The resources here provide:

Company profiles and reports, which provide information for benchmarking and analysis
Trade publications, industry reports, and SWOT analyses

Mergent Online
A database offering comprehensive profiles for publicly traded companies, including financial data and analyst reports for investment and business analysis.
This database contains corporate information on over 25,000 U.S. public companies, over 35,000 foreign public companies, and over 34,000 private companies. Information available for each public company includes: A complete corporate history; Lists of subsidiaries, property holdings, and key personnel; Up to 25 years of annual and quarterly financial data; Up to 10 years of scanned, full-image annual reports, including SEC filings; Extensive information about the corporation's current long term debt; Links to recent news reports; Reports on insider and institutional owners; current and historical (past 15 years) firm descriptions, statistics, financial information and ratios, annual reports, mergers, acquisitions, disposals, joint ventures, long-term debt, capital stock, and insider trading. A variety of search options are available, including company name, ticker symbol, executive's name, auditor, country code, NAICS or SIC industry code, and selected financial characteristics and ratios.

Search for a major company in your industry by name or ticker symbol, and click on the Supply Chain tab to see details about the company's suppliers and customers.

NetAdvantage
A professional company and financial research platform offering in-depth company profiles, industry reports, analysis tools, and data on stocks, industries, and economic indicators to support investment and business decisions.
Updated daily. Provides a comprehensive, professional source of investment information and analysis on industries and companies. Full text coverage includes stock, bond, and mutual fund guides and reports; earnings and dividends reports; comprehensive company information; industry surveys for 52 major U.S. industries; and directories of companies, executives and security dealers

Search for a major company in your industry by name or ticker symbol to view its profile. Click on Industry Surveys in the left side menu to locate detailed industry analysis, including key trends and external factors impacting the industry and supply chain.

Business Source Complete
Full-text articles from thousands of scholarly business journals, magazines, and trade journals from the fields of marketing, management, accounting, finance, and economics.
Access full-text articles from thousands of scholarly business journals, magazines, and trade journals from the fields of marketing, management, accounting, finance, and economics. Plus company and industry profiles, SWOT analyses, country economic reports, financial data, and investment reports. This database includes rigorous curation and indexing of open access (OA) journals. Full-text non-journal content includes company profiles, informational records, case studies, industry reports, business executive interviews, working papers, and over 75,000 videos from the Associated Press.

Search by keyword or company name and limit results to SWOT Analyses, Market Reports, and/or Trade Journals to find expert analysis.

Identifying Competitors & Major Players

IBISWorld
Industry research database providing comprehensive industry reports for NAICS and specialized industries, including performance metrics, product and market trends, statistics, and detailed information for competitive and external environment analysis.
This industry research database contains reports on industries in the China, Global, and U.S. markets. The U.S. content is further subdivided into: Industry Reports classified by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), Specialized Industry Reports for industries not adequately covered by NAICS, US Industry State Reports, US State Economic Profiles, US Industry iExpert Summaries, US Specialized Industry iExpert Summaries, US Business Environment Profiles, and US Business Environment State Profiles. Global industry reports are strong in the manufacturing sector. Each report contains an “at a glance” overview (including SWOT analysis), performance data, outlook data, products & markets analysis, competitive landscape analysis, lists of major companies, operating conditions, and key statistics. Statistics include financial ratios and industry averages from the Risk Management Association.

Find the IBISWorld Industry Report for your industry, and click on Companies to see the major players in your industry

Mergent Online
A database offering comprehensive profiles for publicly traded companies, including financial data and analyst reports for investment and business analysis.
This database contains corporate information on over 25,000 U.S. public companies, over 35,000 foreign public companies, and over 34,000 private companies. Information available for each public company includes: A complete corporate history; Lists of subsidiaries, property holdings, and key personnel; Up to 25 years of annual and quarterly financial data; Up to 10 years of scanned, full-image annual reports, including SEC filings; Extensive information about the corporation's current long term debt; Links to recent news reports; Reports on insider and institutional owners; current and historical (past 15 years) firm descriptions, statistics, financial information and ratios, annual reports, mergers, acquisitions, disposals, joint ventures, long-term debt, capital stock, and insider trading. A variety of search options are available, including company name, ticker symbol, executive's name, auditor, country code, NAICS or SIC industry code, and selected financial characteristics and ratios.

Search for a major company in your industry by name or ticker symbol. On its profile, click on Competitors to see a large list of competing companies.

Reference Solutions
A business directory providing access to detailed information for businesses in the U.S. and Canada, searchable by business name, industry, and geographic location.
Formerly known as ReferenceUSA, Data Axle Reference Solutions contains directory information on U.S. and Canadian business, health care, and residential listings. Search by company name, geographic area, business type, SIC code, yellow page listing, revenue, location, number of employees or any combination of the above. In addition to address and phone number, each entry includes officer names and titles, corporate affiliation, business type and size of yellow page advertising. Toll free and fax numbers are given for some companies. Information is taken from telephone directory (white and yellow pages) listings, postal service Change of Address updates, industry and specialty directories, corporate annual reports, and business publications.

Click on U.S. Businesses and select Advanced Search, then search by NAICS code and limit to a geographic area to see competitors of all sizes within an industry and region.