Section 4 - Industry and Company

Research Sources

Objectives

This section will help you

Be aware of a range of databases providing company and market data

Be able to access and locate information in a variety of databases, including

Marketline, Business Who's Who of Australia (BWW) and Factiva

The library website provides access to a range of databases which contain information

about markets, industries and companies. Profiles can include a range of information

from market performance and forecasts for industries and company contact details and

detailed SWOT analyses for companies. The range and amount of information available

may differ from industry to industry and company to company.

According to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, a database is “a structured

set of data held in a computer.” Databases can contain any type of information,

from experimental results, to catalogues or music. Databases found in libraries

range from book catalogues to databases containing journal and newspaper

abstracts or full text articles, law cases, statistics and company and market

profiles.

Useful industry databases include

Marketline

Useful company databases include:

BWW

Connect 4

Marketline

Factiva

How to find a database

The University subscribes to many databases. To find them:

Go to the Library home page www.library.cqu.edu.au

Click on More Databases under SearchSMART

Go to the Browse for Databases by Subject menu and select Marketing

An alphabetical list of all the databases relevant for marketing will open.

Locate the database you want to access and click on the title.

When trying to access a database off campus, you will be asked to authenticate yourself

by entering your student number and password (either your e.rolment PIN or the barcode

number on your student card).

We will now have a look at how to use these databases to locate information about

companies and industries, using the example for oral hygiene.

Marketline

Marketline is an international database produced by Datamonitor, a large market research

company. Marketline contains industry, company and country profiles, a merger and

acquisitions database, news and databases for statistics relating to countries and consumer

markets.

To browse for profiles in Marketline, select the browse link under the industry, company

or country columns.

To search, enter key words in the search box at the top of the screen.

Browse options

Statistics

Mergers & Acquistions

Search

News

A Marketline search for “oral hygiene” returns relevant company profiles, industry

profiles, deals and news and events on this subject.

Finding Statistics in Marketline

Marketline provides two statistical databases. One contains country data and the other

contains statistics for consumer markets.

Both databases use a menu based system to select criteria.

Consumer Markets

The Consumer Markets database provides statistics for consumer markets.

Country Dynamics

Marketline's Country Dynamics database provides country profiles, tools for comparing

statistics between countries and currency converters.

Exercise 4:

Use Marketline to locate an industry report for your chosen assignment topic. Locate a

company report within your chosen industry.

Connect 4

The Connect 4 database contains annual reports for Australian companies from 1992

onwards. It also contains company prospectuses, mergers and acquisitions data and

boardroom details for companies listed on the stock exchange under the Documents tab.

From the Connect 4 page, choose which product you wish to use

You can use Connect 4 by browsing the list of reports or searching for keywords within

documents

Click on a year to browse the

reports for that year. Reports are

listed in alphabetical order by

ASX code.

Search

Searching Connect 4

To search all annual reports for a particular keyword, enter terms in the Search for words

box. Note if you conduct a search for BHP, the results will include all company reports

that contain the word BHP, including the BHP annual report as well as over 3000

references to BHP in other company reports.

To specify a particular company report, use the ASX code to narrow your search to

relevant results. To identify ASX codes, click on the words Search for ASX Codes.

You can also identify all reports relating to particular industries by using a GICS

Industry from the menu.

It is possible to limit results to a particular year or by the section of the report in which

the search terms appear.

Exercise 5:

Use Connect 4 to locate an annual report for a company operating in your chosen

industry.

Factiva

Factiva contains newspapers, trade journals and academic journals as well as providing

company stock quotes, share charting and company profiles and reports for a range of

Australian and International companies.

It is possible to search for relevant newspaper and journal articles as well as using the

Companies/Markets section to search for company share prices and profiles.

Please note: Factiva has a limited number of concurrent logins available. If a message

displays that states that all available licences are in use, please try again later. Please use

the feature at the top right of the screen to ensure others can use the database.

Company data is available from the Companies/Markets tab on the top of the Factiva

page:

Select Company from the top navigation bar

Enter Company name and click enter.

Select desired company from list of results

The profile includes a company snapshot, financial sheets and news about the

company. It also includes some reports.

To search Factiva for articles

Select the relevant publications. Your choices are:

➢ Select specific publication/s eg Business Review Weekly

➢ Australian publications only

➢ Major Australian Newspapers

➢ All sources (including International publications). If no publication/s are

selected, your search will be across all publications.

Select a date range.

Enter search terms using AND, OR and NOT. Click on „examples' to view

searching tips.

Limit your search to focus your results (optional)

Select „Run Search' to start search.

To browse a publication in Factiva

Enter the publication name in „Find a Source' textbox and click the arrow button

next to the search box to locate the publication.

Click on the blue arrow to the right of the publication name. This will add the

code for the publication into the search box at the top of the page.

Select „Run Search' to browse the publication.

Exercise 6:

Use Factiva to locate the business profile for a company within your chosen industry.