Identifying an Industry
Most industries are officially classified according to the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS). Identifying a NAICS code can significantly help you identify appropriate resources for that industry.
You can do this a few different ways; head to the NAICS web site and sift through industry descriptions until you find what seems like a likely match; or, look up the name of your company in Hoover's Online and find the NAICS code in the company overview.
Industry Research
- IBISWorldIBISWorld provides industry research reports and profiles for over 700 United States industries as well as a wide range of industries in China. Business reports for five categories: industry market research, industry risk ratings, company research, global industry research, and economic and demographic data. Each report provides key statistics, market characteristics and segmentation, industry conditions, leading competitors, industry performance analysis and future outlook.
- Hoover'sA company profiling database that provides detailed company information, a corporate directory (searchable by company name, industry, ticker symbol, sales, location), market quotes, and business news. Includes Hoover's company profile database. Also provides hypertext links to over 5000 company Web sites.
- Business Insights, EssentialsExtensive reference content from Gale's core business collection; easy-to-use company fundamentals and investment research reports; industry rankings, profiles, market share data, company histories, and more.
- ABI/InformABI/Inform, an extensive international business and management database, contains bibliographic citations, abstracts, and full text of articles appearing in professional publications, academic journals, and trade magazines published worldwide. ABI/Inform covers the areas of accounting, banking, computers, economics, engineering management, communications, finance, health care, human resources, insurance, international trends, law, management, marketing, public administration, real estate, taxation, transportation.
- Business Source CompleteBusiness Source Complete provides full text for scholarly business journals and other sources, including full text for more than 1,800 peer-reviewed business publications. Coverage includes virtually all subject areas related to business. This database provides full text (PDF) for top scholarly journals, including the Harvard Business Review. It also includes industry and country reports from Euromonitor and company and industry reports from Datamonitor.