LibGuides: Marketing Research: Industry/Company Research

Industry and Company Research

This page includes only a few of the resources available for conducting company and industry research. Visit the BIS homepage to find more resources.

Beginning Your Research:

Find the SIC/NAICS code for your industry
Go to LexisNexis Academic to generate a list of major players in your industry
- Click "Companies" from the blue menu on the left-hand side of the database
- Click "Dossier Create a Company List"
- Enter your SIC or NAICS code
Choose a company to research
Determine if the company is public, private, or a subsidiary
- This information may be found in LexisNexis Academic
Look at this guide to determine which databases will be most applicable for your research

SIC & NAICS codes

These government tools can help you label products and industries:

Enter industry or product type (not brand name). You may have to follow the broader categories, especially for industry overviews. NAICS is a new system meant to replace the SIC codes. Conversion between SIC and NAICS is available here.

Mergent Online

To find company reports, use the "company search" window on the left side of the home page. You can limit your search to companies in a specific country. Make sure the "International Company Database" box on the left side is checked. Then, click on the "Country" drop-down menu on the right side, select the name, and click search.

Once you have found a company and reached its "company details" page; click the "filings" tab. You will see a table containing details of the company's recent filings. The icons in the "view documents" tab will provide you with various formats for viewing the filings.

If the filing you are looking for is more than 90 days old; you will need to use the EDGAR search function. In the "company search" section; select the Government Filings tab near the top of the page and enter a company name or ticker symbol.

In the "filing date search" section; specify a time frame for your search. Finally; in the "filing type" section; specify what type of filings you are interested in. (Again; Form 10-K is the government-required annual report for publicly-traded companies.)

Mergent Online also has financial ratios. Chad Boenniger at Ohio State has a good video describing how to search the database for individual companies or creating reports which compare ratios of company peers within industries for checking your work when making ratio calculations.

PrivCo

PrivCo This link opens in a new window
"Business and financial data on major, non-publicly traded corporations, including family owned, private equity owned, venture backed, and international unlisted companies." Contains data on over 650,000 U.S. private companies, over 100,000 private market deals and venture captial fundings, and over 18,000 private market market investors. May search by keyword as well as by industry.

Access is free for University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign users, but you must create an account. Sign up with your university e-mail address from the main page. Once inside, search by company or investor name.

User Guide
For more information about PrivCo, click on the PDF icon

Users can search by Company name or keyword in the top search bar.

Under advanced search options, found by clicking on the magnifying glass icon on the left hand side, you can search by term, geography, keyword, revenue, ownership, and more.