Welcome to this research guide! If you are off-campus, many of the resources featured here require that you login with your BroncoName and BroncoPassword.
You can Google the name or look it up in Wikipedia to check if the company is a public company, rather than a private company or a division, subsidiary, or brand of the company you have in mind. You can also take a quick look at these sources for industry information and company information.
If you don't already have a company in mind, the sources below can give you ideas but not every company on these lists will be an agribusiness or publicly traded.
If you need: The product line of the company, its markets (type and geographic location of customers), primary processes, location of the company headquarters and major facilities, number of employees, annual sales, trading symbol and where the company’s stock is traded. Try looking here:
If you need: Background and current situation on the needs, perceptions, and buying trends of customers or consumers, as applicable; with information on the current size and past growth of the market, either in total, by sub-markets, or by geographic area. Try looking here:
If you need: For at least two of the firm’s major products, a recent history of its sales (physical volume), revenues, costs, and profits. Consider this strategy and source:
Take a look at the sources above, but this data may be a bit hard to come by, as the company would have had to willingly reveal this information or an outside analyst would have had to dig for and/or estimate this. You can also search the database called ABI/INFORM Complete for articles and / or marketing reports. It would help if you knew the names of the product(s). Companies that market products or services that are purchased by the consumers themselves (rather than sold to another another industry or company) tend to have more of this sort of information available. Also, industries that have a very large sales volumes (say, soft drinks or fast food) have a lot of analysts or business writers watching their sales situation, which makes the info easier to find. Also, the profits from a particular product or product line would require intimate knowledge of the company's internal numbers and may be really hard to find. You may have to settle for just sales figures and/or overall profitability for the company or some analyst's statement about how a particular product has helped or hurt profits.
If you need: At least two major competitors of your chosen company, the competitors' size, goals, market share, product quality, marketing strategies, and anything else that helps you understand the competitors and their intentions. Try looking here:
If you need: The prices, physical distribution practices, organization, and trade terms used in this industry and by your chosen firm. Try looking here:
If you need: Information about the general economic situation including factors such as economic climate (e.g., inflation, unemployment, interest rates, imports and exports), technology, the political situation, legal issues, social issues, and cultural issues. Try looking here:
Also try looking here, for general background info:
If you need: Internal company Strengths and Weaknesses that may relate to marketing, finance, human resources, operations, leadership, or information technology; and major Opportunities and Threats that come from outside the firm, for example as issues related to changes in technology, government regulation, and customers’/consumers’ preferences. Try looking here:
