Research Guides: Digital Business Library: Executive Education

Introduction

Welcome to the research guide for MBA/Online MBA students. In this guide students will find

Resources for company profiles, industry reports, and their related financial information
Sources for articles on business topics
Sources for consumer information
Business statistical resources
Resources for help

This research guide provides MBA/Online MBA students with a starting point for conducting research on topics of interest in business. This guide directs students to resources that enable them to locate company profiles, industry research, marketing reports, consumer information and articles to support research.

Where to get help

To help you with your research needs, I can help you with the following:

Identifying which resources would be the best sources of information for you.
Using the business databases
Building search strategies to locate information
Locating statistics for projects
Citing business resources
Developing bibliographies for your papers
Building company profile lists and finding company information
Locating industry/market research reports
General class project/research paper help
Any other general business research questions, go ahead, try and stump me

“Jim Jarmusch once told me Fast, Cheap, and Good… pick two. If it’s fast and cheap it won’t be good. If it’s cheap and good, it won’t be fast. If it’s fast and good, it won’t be cheap.

― Paul Maher Jr., Tom Waits on Tom Waits: Interviews and Encounters

Mobile Research Help

During the fall and spring semesters, catch up with me on the porch area of the College of Business RBB building. I'll be there on Monday and Wednesday morning from 9:00-10:00 am to answer questions about library resources and help with research. I am available to help both students and faculty.

Zoom Meeting

If you are having trouble with your research and need more than an email answer, we can set up a Zoom appointment to meet and talk. Use the "Schedule an appointment" button on my information link on the left to schedule a time to meet.

For normal support please use my contacts on the left under "Contact Me!"

I prefer email as the mode of contact. I am also happy to meet via Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or in person.

For emergency requests (i.e. after 5pm Eastern Standard Time) please email with subject heading alerting me you need help. You can also text me at 850-284-0620 and I will do my best to answer in a timely manner.

Try Ask A Librarian https://www.lib.fsu.edu/contact-us for general questions or troubleshooting.

Access Services https://www.lib.fsu.edu/service/renew-materials can solve problems with your library account or request materials.

The Reading-Writing Center https://wr.english.fsu.edu/reading-writing-center is available for help with writing and presentations. Click here and scroll down for hours and information.

Off-Campus Authentication

When you are off-campus, you will automatically be asked to login using your FSUID and password whenever you click on a link from our website or resources. You should login using the same credentials you use to log into Canvas and your FSU webmail. VPN is not required or recommended for accessing library resources off-campus. For more help see Libraries "Off Campus Solutions"

Best Bets

Guide for Researching Articles
For more information on researching all types of business articles.

Do I have access to articles and data off campus?

Yes! Even though you may never actually visit Strozier Library in beautiful Tallahassee, FL, you can access nearly all the resources online using your FSUID. When clicking on the links from one of the library guides or the catalog just enter your FSUID https://www.lib.fsu.edu/service/campus-access when prompted.

What about copyright? May I share documents with others outside of FSU?

The library collections are subject to these terms of use. If you are planning to use the data solely for your own commercial interests, you should absolutely not do that, as it is a violation of our terms of use https://www.lib.fsu.edu/copyright-faq . Violations risk shutting down access for everyone. Ask me if you have any questions!

How do I find it all?

Library guides like this one are great places to start. You can browse the Digital Business Library to look for business resources by research topic or business area, search the catalog or OneSearch https://www.lib.fsu.edu/catalog-and-discovery-upgrades, find articles by format or talk to your librarian.

What if I can't find it online?

You have options!

If we don't own it but we should, email the business librarian.
If we only have it in print and you need a scan (benchmark ratios, for example) you can request it through the Library Express Deilvery Service (LEDS).
LEDS delivers library materials for current FSU faculty members, graduate students, and staff with registered departmental office pick-up and drop-off locations. Scanned articles and book chapters are also available for delivery via email. Deliveries are made during regular business hours and most items are delivered to department offices within 48 hours.

If another library has it and you want to borrow their copy, request through UBorrow (from Florida University Libraries) or Interlibrary Loan (ILL) (for any library that will loan the item). Here’s a link to the ILL FAQ.

Harvard Business Review

The library subscribes to the Harvard Business Review in a variety of places and formats. Here are the quickest ways to get access:

Paper

Can be found in the basement of Strozier, Row 35, 650.5 H339. This copy can only be used in the library. (if you have come this far to read a paper copy, come visit me! I’m steps away to your left in the office next to the vending machines.)

Online

Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window
This database contains all the articles from HBR from 1922 to the present. This is the only electronic copy. If you encounter a read-only article, contact the business librarian for alternatives.
Abbreviation: bscomp
Vendor: EBSCO
Coverage: 1886-Current
Subjects: Business, Business Legal Studies, Communication, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Hospitality, Insurance, Management & Strategy, Marketing, Real Estate, Retail Entrepreneurship, Sport Management, Urban and Regional Planning
Type: Datasets / Statistics, E-Book Collections, E-Journal Collections, Encyclopedias & Dictionaries, Proceedings, Reports

Company Research Guide

These “Best Bets” are good places to start searching for company information, industry-related reports and articles on business topics. Follow the link the top of each section for more in depth information. If you’re having trouble locating the right information you are looking for, please escalate your problem to me.

Mergent Online This link opens in a new window
Mergent Online provides U.S. company data as well as international company data including U.S. company data for over 15,000 public companies and their SEC filings, U.S. annual reports, international company data for approximately 17,000 companies, international annual reports, FactSheets, and country information.
Abbreviation: mergenton
Vendor: Mergent
Subjects: Business, Communication, Entrepreneurship, Hospitality
Type: Datasets / Statistics, Directories, Reports
NetAdvantage (Standard & Poor's) This link opens in a new window
Find business, company and financial reports, plus investment, stock and mutual fund research. Provides financial content for public companies globally as well as hard-to-find private company information. Contains Company Stock Reports, Industry Surveys, Funds Reports, Stock Screener, Corporations, Executives and Directors Screener, Mutual Fund Screener, Corporate Bond Screener, and Compustat Excel Analytics.
Abbreviation: nasp
Vendor: Standard & Poor's
Subjects: Business, Communication, Economics, Finance, Hospitality
Type: E-Book Collections
Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Nexis Uni offers a simple, intuitive research experience with flexible search options and tools to help guide students through common research tasks. Nexis Uni offers the same trusted content collection of more than 15,000 news, legal and business sources and a company research portal: Company Dossier.
Content:
Briefs, Pleadings and Motions
Cases
Company and Financial
Directories
Law Reviews and Journals
Legal News
News
Statutes and Legislation

Abbreviation: nexis
Vendor: LexisNexis
Subjects: Business, Business Legal Studies, Communication, Hospitality, Law, Psychology, Public Administration and Policy, Sociology
Type: Directories, Historical / Primary Sources, Newspapers and Newswires, Proceedings
Factiva (20 concurrent user limit) This link opens in a new window
Factiva.com, from Dow Jones, includes access to a wide range of information from newspapers, newswires, industry publications, websites, company reports, and more. The broad range of content provides both local insight and global perspective on business issues and current events – especially with regard to research requiring current information on companies, industries, and financial markets.
There is a 20 concurrent user limit.

Abbreviation: djfac
Vendor: Dow Jones
Subjects: Business, Communication, Finance
Type: Newspapers and Newswires
PrivCo This link opens in a new window
PrivCo is a source for business and financial data on major privately-held companies, including family owned, private equity owned, venture backed, and international unlisted companies. PrivCo covers over 165,000 companies, including financial data, over 30,000 M&A transactions, and over 15,000 funding rounds. PrivCo also has over 10,000 investors, and advance search options by company, deal or investor, giving you the ability to generate fields of data within seconds based on criteria such as location, sub-industry, revenue and employee sizes, financial backing and more.
Note: create or sign in to your personal user account to access PrivCo.
Abbreviation: priv
Vendor: PrivCo
Subjects: Business, Finance
Type: Datasets / Statistics

Industry Research Guide

These “Best Bets” are good places to start searching for industry-related reports, profiles or articles. If you’re having trouble locating the right information you are looking for, please escalate your problem to me.

IBISWorld Industry Market Research This link opens in a new window
A collection of Industry Market Research and Industry Risk Ratings. Coverage includes over 700 U.S. industries in over 1100 industry-specific reports. Research reports contain trends, statistics and analysis on market size, market share of competitors, forecasting, and industry growth rates. Performance analysis includes emerging trends, recent production performance and 5 year forecasts. The US Specialized Industry Reports series covers niche industries such as pawn shops, boat insurance companies, air gun manufacturers and circus operators.
Abbreviation: ibisworld
Vendor: IBISWorld
Subjects: Business, Communication, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Hospitality, Marketing
Type: Reports
NetAdvantage (Standard & Poor's) This link opens in a new window
Find business, company and financial reports, plus investment, stock and mutual fund research. Provides financial content for public companies globally as well as hard-to-find private company information. In addition to Company Stock Reports, Industry Surveys provide in-depth overview for 50+ major industrial overviews and how to apprise a company in the industry.
Abbreviation: nasp
Vendor: Standard & Poor's
Subjects: Business, Communication, Economics, Finance, Hospitality
Type: E-Book Collections
Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window
Business Source Complete is the world's definitive scholarly business database, providing the leading collection of bibliographic and full text content. As part of the comprehensive coverage offered by this database, indexing and abstracts for the most important scholarly business journals back as far as 1886 are included. In addition to the searchable cited references provided for more than 1,200 journals, Business Source Complete contains detailed author profiles for the 20,000 most-cited authors in the database. Journal ranking studies reveal that Business Source Complete is the overwhelmingly superior database for full text journals in all disciplines of business, including marketing, management, MIS, POM, accounting, finance and economics. Additional full text, non-journal content includes financial data, books, monographs, major reference works, book digests, conference proceedings, case studies, investment research reports, industry reports, market research reports, country reports, company profiles, SWOT analyses and more.
Abbreviation: bscomp
Vendor: EBSCO
Coverage: 1886-Current
Subjects: Business, Business Legal Studies, Communication, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Hospitality, Insurance, Management & Strategy, Marketing, Real Estate, Retail Entrepreneurship, Sport Management, Urban and Regional Planning
Type: Datasets / Statistics, E-Book Collections, E-Journal Collections, Encyclopedias & Dictionaries, Proceedings, Reports

Mintel Academic This link opens in a new window
Offers research reports covering European, UK-specific, and US consumer markets. Reports analyze market drivers, size and trends, market segmentation along with consumer sentiment and buying habits. Reports are supplemented with brief digests of relevant recent events, UK and US demographic and economic statistics, and useful lists. Use "Advanced Search" option at the top of the page to enter search terms and select regions for reports.
Industries covered include:
Automotive
Beauty
Consumer Electronics
Digital Media
Drink
Financial Services
Food
Foodservice
Health & Wellness
Household
Personal Care
Packaging
Retail
Sport & Entertainment Travel & Tourism

Tutorials:
Interactive Databook Training (10:39)
A 10-minute tutorial video on how to navigate Interactive Databook, how to explore demographics, and customize your own consumer data report.

Abbreviation: mintel
Vendor: Mintel International Group
Coverage: 2001Current
Subjects: Business, Communication, Hospitality, Marketing
Type: Datasets / Statistics, Reports
Statista This link opens in a new window
Statista consolidates statistical data on over 80,000 topics from more than 22,500 sources. Statista Research & Analysis is a combined provider of market research as well as research and analysis services. We help corporate customers collect and prepare market, customer, and competitive information. Market Outlooks provide market sizes, forecasts and other indicators for the digital economy, key consumer markets and relevant automotive markets for up to 150 countries. The Global Consumer Survey allows analyses of consumer behavior and media usage in the on- and offline world based on the data of 700,000 consumers from 55 countries, who were surveyed about 50 topics and 6,500 brands.
Abbreviation: stati
Vendor: Statista
Subjects: Business, Communication, Demography and Population Studies, Economics, Hospitality, Marketing, Public Health, Urban and Regional Planning
Type: Datasets / Statistics
Statistical Abstract of the United States This link opens in a new window
Provides abstracts and indexes of statistical information from over 100,000 U. S. government publications, state, and private sources, and approximately 2000 documents from international organizations.
Tutorials:
Statistical Abstract of the U.S. ProQuest LibGuide

Abbreviation: saus
Vendor: ProQuest
Coverage: 1973-Current
Subjects: Demography and Population Studies, Public Health, Statistics, Urban and Regional Planning
Type: Datasets / Statistics
Sage Data This link opens in a new window
Provides statistical data from U.S. government publications, state and private sources, and international organizations. Conduct search by keyword(s) and limit results by publishing organization, geographic region, local area, or broad subject. Data may be further restricted by demographic features (age, marital status, industry, etc.).
Subjects: Statistics and Data, Business, Finance, Economics, Sociology, Political Science, International Studies, International Relations, Demography, Agriculture, Education, Criminal Justice, Housing and Construction, Labor and Employment, Energy Resources and Industries, Climate and Weather.

Abbreviation: dpf
Vendor: SAGE Publishing
Subjects: Communication, Criminology and Criminal Justice, Demography and Population Studies, Finance, Food, Geography, International Affairs, Law, Political Science, Public Health, Public Safety and Security, Social Work, Statistics, Urban and Regional Planning
Type: Citation Management, Datasets / Statistics, Directories, Government Publications, Historical / Primary Sources, Maps
MRI Simmons Catalyst (20 concurrent user limit) This link opens in a new window
MRI-Simmons Insights provides access to consumer demographic, psychographic, brand preference, and media data from the Simmons National Consumer Survey (NCS/NHCS). The survey provides access to over 60,000 data elements:
• detailed consumer demographic data
• products and services usage for over 8,000 brands in more than 500 categories
• over 600 consumer attitudes, opinions, and segmentations
• shopping and spending behavior
• media and technology usage information
• lifestyle segmentations

The library subscribes to the following MRI-Simmons Insights studies:
• NHCS Adult Study: demographics, psychographics, products & services usage, purchase behaviors, and media usage for US adult (18+) consumers. The library's subscription provides access to the Fall releases of the Adult 6-month and Adult 12-month studies, with a 2-year embargo from the study release date.
• Simmons Connect Plus: includes all NHCS study data plus additional data on consumers’ use of 11 traditional and digital media platforms, including reach, time spent, and activity measures. The library's subscription has a 2-year embargo from the study release date.
Tutorials:
Introducing Simmons Insights (4:52)

Abbreviation: insi
Vendor: MRI Simmons
Subjects: Business, Communication, Demography and Population Studies, Marketing
Type: Datasets / Statistics
RKMA Market Research Handbooks This link opens in a new window
RKMA market research handbooks focus on various consumer-related markets. Each handbook includes market forecasts, sector trends, and statistics.
Abbreviation: rkmabk
Vendor: Richard K. Miller & Associates
Subjects: Business, Communication, Hospitality, Management & Strategy, Marketing, Sport Management
Type: E-Book Collections
SMA: Sports Market Analytics This link opens in a new window
SMA: Sports Market Analytics combines market research from the largest single research supplier to the industry, the National Sporting Goods Association; the U.S. Department of Commerce; various sports governing bodies; and full-text articles from 14 magazines and newsletters published by VNU, the world's largest sporting goods trade publisher, and newsletters provided by leading independent industry experts. Subjects covered include sporting goods industry, sports sponsorship and marketing, broadcasting, facilities, broadcasting and new media.
Single sport/product search include:
Archery
Backpacking
Badminton
Baseball
Basketball
Bicycling
Billiards
Bowling
Cheerleading
Camping/Hiking Climbing
Equestrian
Exercise/Fitness
Eyewear
Fishing
Footwear
Football
Golf
Gymnastics
Hunting/Shooting
Ice Hockey
Inline Skating
Lacrosse
Martial Arts
Motorsports
Paintball
Rugby
Running/Jogging
Scooter Riding
Skateboarding
Skiing
Snowboarding
Soccer
Softball
Tennis
Volleyball
Water Sports (All)
Winter Sports (All)
Women's Total Market
Wrestling

Abbreviation: sbrnet
Vendor: SBRnet
Subjects: Business, Communication, Marketing, Sport Management, Sport Psychology, Statistics
Type: Datasets / Statistics, Directories, E-Journal Collections, Government Publications

Citation Styles

Which citation style should I use?

The College of Business does not have a standard style for citing information. It is the professor's prerogative for assigning a citation style required in the class. If there is no preferred style, I suggest Harvard, APA or Chicago. All are straightforward and commonly used.

Where can I find information on how to cite?

The following guides will give you a general overview of the commonly used styles along with examples, and information on the citation management programs such as Zotero and Mendeley,

How can I cite common business sources? (examples please)

To find information on how to cite common business sources, such as:

articles
print books
annual report/10-K
working papers
web sources
images, tables, charts
lecture notes

Please check out the following libguides:

APA Style: Citing Guide for Business Majors (from Butler University Libraries)
Chicago Style or Harvard Business School Style: Citing Guide (from Harvard Business School)