Preliminaries - Library Services
Industry Overviews
Find industry leaders, statistics, current status, future trends, histories and profiles of the industries here. If you look up the NAICS/SIC codes (see below) for your industry first, this will be a bit easier.
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IBISWorld - In-depth industry market research reports with analysis, data, conditions, segmentation, market share, primary companies, and outlook for over 700 industries in the US.
- Standard & Poor's NetAdvantage website - use "Industry" tab - for major industries
- Hoover's First Research - hundreds of brief and timely overviews
- Value Line Investment Survey - 101 more brief and timely overviews, from an independent investment analyst service.
- MarketLine – in-depth profiles of thousands of specific industries in many countries, from the research firm Datamonitor; for consumer products, use the "Value Consumer Markets" section on the right side.
- MergentOnline - click on "Industry Reports" tab at top - major industries covered, for a variety of countries.
- Industry section of Business & Company Resource Center - use Overviews, Rankings, and Market Research tabs for lengthy industry profiles and company comparisons.
- Investext/Thomson Research - analyst reports from banks and brokerage firms on industry trends and conditions
- Gartner – specializes in technology products and services. (Note: Dataquest reports are not in our subscription.)
- ProQuest has First Research reports - search for "[your industry] and industrywide conditions" to locate them. To see all of them, do a publications search for "First Research".
- Association website for your industry – try googling key words (i.e. "robotics organization" will turn up the Robotics Industry Association) or Google's Directory: Associations by Industry. When you've found your association's website, look for links to research, data, publications, statistics, conference proceedings, etc.
- Links to reports and statistics, by detailed industry, on valuation.com's Industry Resources.
Government data
News sources about markets and industries
Often the best reports on industries, such as an annual review, come out in their trade journals - found in these databases. Use search terms such as “market,” “forecast,” “trends,” “industry overview,” etc. along with your own market identifier, i.e. “organic food."
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Proquest – wide-ranging news database containing many smaller databases within it - thousands of publications, including complete Wall Street Journal and New York Times
- Business & Company Resource Center – thorough and international coverage, enormous range of publications
- Lexis-Nexis Academic– most wide-ranging industry news database available
Industry Ratios
Financial ratios for each industry, used to compare a company's performance to the industry as a whole, or for cross-industry comparisons.
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eStatement Studies - Financial Ratios Benchmarks providing industry norms, and Industry Default Probabilities and Cash Flow Measures.
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RMA Annual Statement Studies - in print in the Hunt Library reference collection: HF5681 .B2 R6
- Yahoo Finance industry reports - look at Industry Statistics on the right
- bizstats.com - free internet source
NAICS and SIC Code Definitions and Look-ups
The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) and the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code systems classify industries numerically. They are often used to categorize business information by industry; many of the resources listed above use them.
Questions?
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