There are three key electronic resources at the
University to help you in discovering information to do market research. The
following represent my judgment of the best available tools – they’re as good
as – or better – than the online resources available even within big companies.
Ask a librarian for some help in getting started …
|
|
Overview of contents |
Suggestions for use |
Notes |
|
(U
of T Library) |
In-depth
investment research and other data about public companies. |
Look
up reports about key competitors – most of the longer reports have statistics
about market size and other salient info. |
|
|
(U
of T Library) |
Full
text articles from 1000’s of periodicals, including almost all the usual
business and technology industry publications. |
This
is the place to look for info on companies that are not publicly traded. |
|
|
RDS Suite (available only on one terminal on-site at
the Business
Information Centre at the |
Market research on a huge range of industries from a wide range of sources – priceless! |
The most direct tool for finding out about a market. RDS Suite has very elegant and precise search tools will help you pinpoint the relevant data source(s). |
Make
sure you look at the “Tables” feature … |
Don’t forget the regular Internet! You can find out a tremendous
amount about your public competitors and their markets by tracking down their
major document filings with the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) < www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/srch-edgar> or the corresponding
Canadian agency <www.sedar.com>.
If none of these sources have the data you’re
looking for, it’s probably only available in high-cost market research reports
(e.g., Frost & Sullivan, Forrester, etc.).
Good luck!
Philip D. Stern
pstern@kmdi.toronto.edu January
2003