MKTG 4310 Marketing Research

Go to the company’s website! This is a logical first step.

Look for a menu option or page described as About Us, Reports & Publication, Annual Reports or something similar.  For a public company, you may see this information  described as Investor Resources. Often companies have entirely different web presence for company related information  This information can be tricky to locate so check the menu, site maps, footer and contact options.

You can search for company information using company name or ticker symbol fields in these database.

Why does it matter? Searching with the ticker symbol and searching a specific field makes your search more precise.  Instead of getting information that mentions your company, the result will show information specifically about your company.  The concept works the other way around. If you find that you are not getting enough results, then search all fields to broaden your search results.

These databases offer different types of sources, including news and articles about companies, These databases contain articles and reports from trade and industry specific publications  It's always important to read the descriptions of each database. 

Why does this matter? You want to gather multiple types of high-quality sources to get the full picture. This may also be one of the few ways to locate private company information.  Reading the database description will also save you time.  You will know exactly what type of information is indexed.