Know Your Competition!
Part of a strong business plan is making the case for why your product/service stands out from its peers. You're expected to know your competition inside and out.
While some competitors are immediately obvious through rankings and general research, smaller firms don't always make the usual hits.
- CareerSearch
CareerSearch is a powerful employment research tool that allows screening for companies by industry, geographic location, size, or keyword. - Gartner Intraweb Analyst reports on trends and competitors in the IT, high-tech industry.
- ProductScan
Contains information on new product launches for over 500,000 consumer packaged goods worldwide.
Industry Research Resources
Do you know the trends affecting your industry? Are there government regulations that affect your ability to enter a particular industry? What are the top industry associations?
Use these resources to answer industry questions.
- Associations Unlimited Associations often provide free reports and industry data. Covers approximately 460,000 international and US national, regional, state, and local nonprofit membership organizations in all fields, including IRS data on U.S. 501(c) nonprofit organizations.
- Business and Company Resource Center Excellent information for a wide range of industries, both US-based and global. Includes the "Encyclopedia of American Industries" and "Encyclopedia of Emerging Industries."
- IBISWorld IBISWorld provides industry research reports and profiles for over 700 United States industries as well as a wide range of industries in China.
- Market Insight Contains Standard and Poor's industry surveys, a premier source of US industry information. They include current outlook and trend information; How to analyze a company in the industry and provide industry references.
- Mergent Online Comprehensive financial database that provides international industry reports as well as financial filings, etc. Latin American reports as well.
- Stat-USA A US government site that includes excellent international industry reports and market information. Choose the "Globus & NTDB" link and then select either the "Country Commercial Guides" or "Industry Sector Analysis Reports."
- Thomson One Banker's Analyst Reports Analyst reports are available from the "reseach" component of this comprehensive financial database. Select "research" from the left-hand column.
- US Economic Census Survey of all US businesses conducted every 5 years. (2002, 2007, etc.). Choose "reports by sector" or use the "statistics sampler" search engine.
- US Census Bureau Includes American Factfinder -- easy-to-use source of city, demographic, income and other data.
Also useful is the US Statistical Abstract, a compendium of government, association and business statistics.
Industry News
Keep track of what is being written about your indusry, competitors, trends and opportunities. Media coverage can be a great source of most recent information for even the smallest or niche industries.
- Business and Company Resource Center Includes trade periodicals and industry overviews for global industries and companies.
- Business Source Complete
TIP: Choose the "Company Profiles" tab to read Datamonitor reports for global companies. Premiere source for SWOT analyses. - Factiva Did you know that the first page you land on when you visit Factiva allows you to "browse" through recent editions of The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times or Washington Post?
- Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe Contains thousands of newspapers, newswires, legal cases, patents, and trade journals.
Description
Loading content... please wait
 |
Loading content... please wait