BA 604: Business Research Methods

Business Research Methods

Business Research Methods

Business Research Methods

Busines Research Methods Sources in the library

Business Expert Press 
Briefing books on many business subjects.  Free registration for full download. 

Sage Research Methods 

For the advanced user.  Find resources to answer your research methods and statistics questions. Use the Methods Maps to narrow to your area of interest, Reading lists, Project planner, Stats Pick tool.  Has  books, short articles and tutorials.

Business Subject Guide 

Industry and Company Research

Industry and Company Research

Industry and Company Research Videos

Welcome to CSUSM library and business research.

This library offers books, news, scholarly journals, and extensive business reports, statistices and data for your business research.

This page offers videos and guides to only few of the most popular library databases to get you started.

General guides and videos to using the CSUSM library website.
1. Always Login to the Library to see the most full text, ebooks, and videos.

2. Getting general help from the library website  (If the question is specific to your business assignment it is best to contact the business librarian expert.

 

Videos orientations to library research for business:
Students new to campus and business research.  BUS  302 and BUS 495 you are responsible for viewing videos prior to library sessions.

 1. Introduction to Business Research at CSUSM library    VIDEO
This short video is an introduction to using the CSUSM library for business research.  If you are new to the campus you will want to view this.  The library home page has changed but the links discussed have similar functions.

2. Industry Research  at CSUSM 
This 5 min video is what you need to get started on industry research for many of your courses.   If you are new to the campus this is required viewing and will show you how to use these premium subscription industry reports.

IBISWorld Industry Research (Note interface has changed... videos show older interface to be updated)

3. IBISWorld Getting Started Videos  2 min
4. IBISWorld Industry Reports Video Tutorial   2 min
 

US Census Tutorial NAIC (6 min.)

Understanding NAICS (North American Industry Classification System).
IBISWorld uses the NAICS to classify industry reports. 

ReferenceUSA: Business Directories  companies, private, public, non profit, education, govenment etc. 

5. ReferenceUSA Learning Center  videos and guides
6. Step By Step Guide to RefUSA Company & Competitor search.  Self paced guide to create a competitor analysis using the industry and geographic locations of your choice.  (BUS 302 and BUS 495)

Passport by Euromonitor  Economic and Consumer market analysis worldwide)
To get started see the video upper right and look at the guide.  Recommend you register on the site since there is a bit of a learning curve its well worth it.
Global comsumer market, industry and countries.   Passport search guide  

 Premium Business databases to see all business research databases for CSUSM

Most popular library databases:  To research general articles on Business writing, leadership, and business communication go to Most Popular Library Databases. BUS 203 Business Writing

I recommend Ebsco Academic Search Premier and Proquest for business news trade magazines and some scholarly material.

 

Industry Profiles (Industry overview reports)

Industry Research

Industry Reports  prepared by expert analysts in this premium content.  Offer a broad description and outlook at the macro environment of an industry, key trends, broad customer profiles and market or investment analysis of the industry.  Many databases offer the ability to search by NAICS code. 

IBISWorld  US Industry reports. Search by keyword OR NAIC code (uses 5 digits of 6 digit codes).     

Industry Research in over 700 reports by NAIC for the US. industry analysis, external, internal and economic, supply chain.  Some Global and International Reports

First Research  (Mergent Intellect)

Industry Research and Interview starter questions for exec levels.  Social Media feed updates on business and industry.

Mergent Online  Go to  the Report Search Tab to get to the industry reports. 
Use for major industries only,  global coverage. Especially useful for industries represented by publicly traded companies. Search by company or broad industry name.

ABI Inform / Complete  (Global )
Use the BROWSE   tab for publications on industry, commodities, and country reports.

  • BMI Country Industry Reports
  • BMI Global Oil Market Reports
  • BMI Industry Insight Reports
  • BMI Risk Reports

Business Source Premier (EbscoHost database) 

Marketline reports with global coverage. Each report contains statistics on industry market value, forecast, and market segmentation, competition and leading companies.  Look for Porter's Five Forces analysis.  Each report is 24 pages long, caution to look at dates may be older.

 

PRINT SOURCE

S&P Capital IQ  Industry Surveys HG4915 .S652  3rd Floor Reference [Print ONLY]

Excellent for in depth analysis industries representing large US corporations. Segments on Industry Trends, How an Industry Operates, How to Analyse a Company.  Its in print but it is the single best industry introduction source in this library.  Excellent source for more sources of information such as trade magazines, professional associations and regulators.

Industry Specific:

Hospitality --- BRASS Business Librarian recommendations for researching the hospitality industry. 

Fashion:  On the Front Lines when Currencies Shift

Local Industry Analysis 

San Diego Economic Development Industry Reports  (Website)
"San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation (EDC) regularly releases and sponsors research that provides a baseline of industry data to encourage and support economic investment. EDC also conducts studies on key industries and identify actions needed to spur growth in the region." (Source: San Diego Regional EDC).

San Diego Association of Governments [SANDAG] (Website)
          SANDAG serves as the forum for regional decision-making for the San Diego
          region. Resources such as Demographics and other data and publications will
          be of interest. 

 

Market Research Reports

Passport Euromonitor Global Industry Reports  Detailed reporting.  GBM 425  and SE MARKETING PROJECTS
Euromonitor Industry reports, in depth analysis on trends in consumer products and services industries, include market analyst reports and statistical data.  Country and consumer reseacher as well as economic, business and transport.

Financial Industry Analysis For those looking for more financial analysis. 

Bizminer   Detailed industry financial and industry market analysis.   9000 industries by sales.  Find reports at the national, state, county, metro and zip code.  Update 6/18:  Now shows Z-scores for credit strength and financial viability.

Industry Snapshots by NAIC from the census
Statistical profiles of US Industries by NAIC. 

Statistical Abstract of the United States (Proquest)
Excellent compilation of essential statistics to support other reports.  The source is often government and other agencies. 

Books on Industry in the library.

Hundreds of different industries are represented in the library catalog.
You will find whole books on the food industry, or service industries, craft beer, restaurants, etc.

Manufacturing Industries
Retail trade
Service Industries
Industry Profile United States (e-reports)

 

 

Business News

Business News

Business News

  • Change sort order to Newest Date first
  • Narrow by Subject (more options)

Business Source Premier (EBSCO)
Good for trade news and the only place to find Harvard Business Review (HBR selected not all).

FACTIVA
Excellent for international and major business news.  (WSJ, NYT, Washington Post, San Diego Union-Tribune)

Factiva Tips!  

  • Change Date from 3 months to 2 years
  • Choose the NEWS PAGES on the black bar to get the latest 2 weeks WSJ, NYT, LA Times, Washington Post and others

Business News Publications

Newsbank:  America's News
Full text of major news sources including the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune, and Press Enterprise

 

San Diego Union Tribune    Link here and print edition, see 3rd floor of the library (behind the research help desk).
San Diego Business Journal   Proquest ABI Inform and print edition, see 3rd floor of the library (behind the research help desk).
Press Enterprise Riverside County Newsbank

 

Bloomberg BusinessWeek   Full text through Business Sources Premier

Bloomberg Tip!  Search within this publication    top right

 

The Economist  (online) Full text link.  [via Proquest ABI Inform]  Free Economist gives only limited content

Financial Times (London) ABI Inform (Proquest)  Last month not available. 

Harvard Business Review  Ebsco - Business Source Premier -- Full text of Harvard business review.

HBR Tips!

  • Some full text not available electronically.  See paper edition  HF5001.H3 (4th floor periodicals)
  • Case studies are not available in this subscription

Trade and  Professional Associations  -- Industry Trending News

Look to trade association pages on the free web.  Many industry and news reports will identify them.  Some information is available free, but most are only available to members.  Get around this by searching the association name for news reports in the above databases.  Examples of trade and professional associations are the National Restaurant Association; American Library Association.

Find associations in the industry reports recommended here, such as First Research.  Search on the web using .org   Find references to associations in news article

 

 

 

 

Statistics and Data

Statistics and Data

Business Statistics and Data

Data and Reports for Business Research

Featured

US Census upcoming workshops and webinars

OnTheMap  Census Bureau
Map and get reports on ongressional districts, tribal areas, geographies, workforce, transortation, education, waterways, parks

Open Data Sources

Data.gov  One stop shop for government data.  In development

Data USA  Open data on public data for United States. Compiled by "Deloitte, Datawheel, and Cesar Hidalgo, Professor at the MIT Media Lab and Director of Collective Learning" (student recommended)

Google Public Data
Selected data set search,  ability to create and save your own data sets.

 

California Higher Education Data Sources
Web Data sources for California Higher Education 

Census and Government Sources: 

USA.gov Statistics  Search for all levels of government data and statistics

Statistical Abstract of the United States of the United States Quick look up to fast facts.  By topic, employment, demographics, business enterprises, labor, population, health, etc.

US Census www.census.gov
     People and Households; Business and Industry,. geography

American Community Survey is an annual survey on demographics that updates the dicennial census.
An excellent source for customer demographics is the U.S. Census especially the yearly American Community Survey which samples population characteristics.   The kinds of information collected by the U.S. Census Bureau supports the work of and is used by federal, state, and local government agencies.

What's the difference between the U.S. Census and the American Community Survey?
American Factfinder  A tool to find census data
San Diego Association of Governments  County planning and transportation for San Diego County
In San Diego the local arm of the Census is SanDAG the San Diego Association of Governments which takes census data and inteprets and augments the data for local economic and land use and transportation planning

Commercial Databases (CSUSM users only)

The library subscribes to a number of data sets useful for business, many are listed in the library business course guides and research guides. Listed here are those with extensive statistics and data useful for business decisions. 

ReferenceUSA Consumer and Lifestyle Database   Use for business company look up, competitor analysis, site location, target market areas, links to Yahoo jobs and company contact info.  Limited lifestyle and demographics.

Euromonitor Passport Reports and Statistics 
Passport has a global consumer behavior marketing reports and statistics, supply chain, and economics.

ESRI GIS Business and Community Analyst Online.  See Ann Fiegen for password access

Simply Analytics (CSUSM users only)
Demographic, socio-political, and consumer behavior data and analysis.  Contains mapping and spatial analysis features.  Requires individual registration, be sure to look at the video introduction in upper right.   Contact the business librarian for help using this excellent source.

 

 

 

 

 

GIS (Geographical Information Systems) for Business

GIS (Geographical Information Systems) for Business

GIS for Business and Marketing

 

ESRI Community / Business Analyst

Demographic & Lifestyle data with Spatial Analysis -- Mapping

GIS in Business videos from the ESRI 2016 Business summit right in San Diego

Access to ESRI data and mapping service is available via password request.  Contact AnnFiegen, your instructor or the GIS lab.

For library research associated with a business assignment contact the business librarian,  Judy Opdahl, JOpdahl@csusm.edu to be put in contact with an administrator for a password.

About GIS @ CSUSM

Business Analyst Online  Sign in with CSUSM password 
Business Analyst Online Web app  One minute getting started video.

 

ArcGIS Online

HELP INTRODUCTION to using Community Analyst Online

ESRI Demographics   See data source, available geographies and years and methodologies.  US and Other countries.
Sectors include:   For the US: ESRI Updated demographics, Census and ACS, Tapestry Segmentation, Consumer Spending, Market Potential, Retail MarketPlace, Business Data, Major Shopping Center, Traffic Counts.  

Available geographics:  Census designations, and DMA (Designated Market Areas)  based on Nielsen Media Research.

Consumer Spending:     20 categories with data derived from Bureau of Labor Consumer Expenditure Surveys
Market Potential:    35 categories of products and services derived from GfK MRI
Retail MarketPlace:     Retail sales by industry (NAIC) and measures supply and demand. 
Business Location Data:     By SIC/NAIC industry; annual sales, employees and other. Compiled from InfoGroup.  Use for site or competitor analysis, day or evening hiring by industry, match to busines inventory statistics.
Major Shopping:     Location and data on major shopping center.
Traffic Counts:    Daily volume and changes. 
 

ESRI White Papers HELP PAGES
Using data from the American Community Survey  (how to work with margins of error and more)

Importing your own data into Business Analyst

Explore ESRI GIS Retail for marketing, merchandizing and real estate and supply chain

ESRI Demographics Global Coverage Story Map directing user to data and maps

ESRI Insights    ESRI Insights Tutorial

 

 

 

APA Citing Your Sources

APA Citing Your Sources

Guide to Using APA Business Citations

APA Citation Style Guide (General)

 

    Has links to guides and citation generators.

Sources, Citations and Style. Watch this APA Citation Style Video (OWL Purdue. 2015) BUS 495 

____________________________________________________________________________

Reference the APA handout created by the writing center.  This is a single-page handout. It is intended to be printed two-sided and tri-folded.

Image of one side of APA trifold
Image showing inside of APA guide

 

____________________________________________________________________________

Common Business Citation Styles in APA Format

How to Cite in Text:
Cite as (last name or company name, year, page number). Example: (Longboard Grotto, 2009, p.23)

 

Example: 
She stated, "Students often had difficulty using APA style" (Jones, 1998, p. 199), but she did not offer an explanation as to why.

According to Jones (1998), "Students often had difficulty using APA style, especially when it was their first time" (p. 199).

Consult the Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) for detailed explanations and additional examples. Copies are available at the Cal State San Marcos Research Help Desk (BF76.7.P83 2009) or on Reserve.

 

Recommended Citation Generators:

A note of caution about Citation Generators.... NOT ALL ARE ACCURATE! Like everything, you need to know the basics and use them with caution and expect to make corrections. EbscoHost databases and Proquest have built in citation generators for each article. Use Cite This, or email citation. Known bug: Proquest authors and dates may need reformatting.

 

KnightCite       Hekman Library Calvin College
DocsCite          Arizona State University to help cite government documents
Owl at Purdue APA Style.     Highly recommended. Also note the sample manuscript with notations for APA instructions on formatting.
 

DOI Digital Object Identifiers

Cite the article as you would any print article and add the electronic access information at the end.
DOI: To access electronic articles preference is given to supplying an Digital Object Identifier, a unique number for an article. Inclusion of the DOI, if available, facilitates retrieval

 

Example: doi:10.1108/03090560710821161
* If no DOI end with the home page, do not paste the whole URL of the database name.

 

Articles, News or Trade:

 

News article with DOI: 
Brownlie, D. (2007). Toward effective poster presentations: An annotated bibliography. European Journal of Marketing, 41, 1245-1283. doi:10.1108/03090560710821161

 

News article, no DOI, in Factiva 

Kenneth, I. A. (2000). A Buddhist response to the nature of human rights. Retrieved from Factiva.

CQ FD Disclosure (2017). Event Brief of Q3 2017 McCormick & Company Inc Earnings Call - Final. Retrieved from Factiva. 

Newspaper: San Diego Union Tribune

Econometer: $15 an hour for fast food jobs? Should the minimum wage be nearly doubled to $15 per hour for fast-food workers? (2013, September 8). U-T San Diego (CA) (First Edition ed.), C-2. Retrieved September 13, 2013, from NewsBank on-line database (Access World News)

 

Articles, Scholarly:

Example: 
Klimoski, R., & Palmer, S. (1993). The ADA and the hiring process in organizations. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 45(2), 10-36. doi: 10.1037/1061-4087.45.2.1)

 

Books:

Examples: 
Chapter in a book
O'Neil, J. M., & Egan, J. (1992). Men's and women's gender role journeys: A metaphor for healing, transition, and transformation. In B. R. Wainrib (Ed.), Gender issues across the life cycle (pp. 107-123). New York, NY: Springer.

Whole book: 
McDonald, M. & Keegan, W. J. (1997). Marketing plans that work. Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann.

E-book, no DOI: 
Stark, J. (2010). Building iPhone apps with html, css, and javascript [1st ed]. Retrieved from http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com/9781449380236

 

Chapter or Section of a web document:
Cite the most specific webpage that you reference in your paper and include a link to the specific page.

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Date of publication). Title of article. In Title of book or larger web document (chapter or section number).

 

Example: 
Spain: Culture (2010). In GlobalEdge. Retrieved January 18, 2010 from https://GlobalEdge.msu.edu/countries/spain/culture

 

Company Information TEMPLATE 

Author (date of publication). Title of article. Title of Journal, volume number, page number. Retrieved from http://nnnnnnn.htm 
Title of company (date). Publisher, database source. Retrieved from source name.

 

Examples: Entries in library databases:
Hoover’s Inc. (2010, February 16). Harley Davidson, Incorporated: In-depth record. Retrieved from ABI Inform.

Company website: 
Qualcomm (2010). FY 2009 4th Quarter Earnings Release. Retrieved from the Qualcomm, Inc. website https://www.qualcomm.com

 

Industry Reports
Example:

Cohen, A. (2017). Department stores in the U.S report 45211. IBISWorld Industry. Retrieved from IBISWorld database

First Research (2017). Clothing Stores.  Retrieved from Mergent First Research. 

Industry Statistics:
Example: 
U.S. Census Bureau. (2010). Musical instrument and supplies stores NAICS: 45114. Washington DC: Author.
Retrieved August 22, 2016 from the World Wide Web:https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml

 

Data Set (user created): For customized datasets derived from an electronic database.

REFERENCEUSA or data generated from an analytics site or GIS

Example: 
InfoGroup. (2010). Corporate Lodging San Diego Metro Area. Available from ReferenceUSA database.

ESRI. San Diego County Market Potential. 2016. www.communityanalystonline.com. August 25, 2017. 

SimplyAnalytics user created data set / map:

SimplyAnalytics (2017). EASI/MRI Consumer Expenditure Data 2016. Retrieved February 17th, 2017, from SimplyAnalytics database.

Encyclopedia, Reference Source or Chapter in a book
See Reference list: other print sources. In Purdue Owl.

Encyclopedia, No author: 
Physical Fitness Products. (2007). In Encyclopedia of American industries. (pp. 671-675). Millerton, NY: Grey House Publications.

Reference work, Author:
Basham, M. (2009). Restaurants. In Standard & Poor's industry surveys. (Vol. 1). New York: Standard &Poor's.

Reference work: Multiple Authors: (authors in order as they appear)
Edell, J. A., & Burke, M. C. (1998). Feelings towards ads. In Bearden, W. O. & Netemeyer, R. G. In Handbook of marketing scales (2nd ed., pp. 283-285). Thousand Oaks: Sage.

 

Legal Citation Formats

See Westlaw or use the Uniform System of Case Citation (Blue Book).

Media--Video
To get the data for this YouTube clip you will need to extract speaker or author name, introductory slide, and other info.

Example: 
CSUSM (2015). Forward Together: The Campaign for California State University San Marcos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7W1MXQUPFE

Personal Communication  (interview, email, phone call)
APA rules states that you cite your interviews or emails in the text only since they are not retrievable. Include person's name, type of communication, date.    Check with your professor who may also require you to list them in the Works Cited list.

In Text Example:
...  (J. Welch, personal communication, January 21, 2010)
.... Patricia Burns, e-mail message to author, December 15, 2008.

REV 10/13 by Carly Den Hartog CSUSM CoBA
10/17 afiegen

 

 

Need Help?

Judy Opdahl

Business & Economics Librarian
Office Telephone

760-750-4307

Office Location

KEL 3424

Office Hours
Scroll Down to see if I am currently available via Chat. If not email jopdahl@csusm.edu for an research consultation (appointment).