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Business Research Guide

Industry Research: Introduction

This guide was prepared by the Business subject specialist for the Dalhousie community. These resources have been selected as excellent starting points for academic research on industries. For further research assistance, please contact Dr. Joyline Makani

Page Contents:

  1. Industry Classifications
  2. Industry Profiles/Analysis
  3. Industry Ratios
  4. Market research
  5. Find Journal articles
  6. Identify Companies within an Industry
  7. Feedback Form

Related Guides: Company Research, Marketing & Advertising, Entrepreneurship, International Business/Country Research, Statistics & Data

Identify Classification Codes

What are Industry Classification codes?

These codes group together similar products or services that companies produce and can be used in many business databases to quickly retrieve articles and data on similar industries and companies, thereby facilitating the easy collection, tabulation, presentation and analysis of financial data and related information.

Market Research

Industry Profiles/Reports, Analysis & Data

Identify Companies within an Industry

Search the the following resources to identify companies within an industry, direct and indirect competitors, suppliers etc:

Ratios/Benchmarking Data

Use the following resources to get benchmarking data at the industry level.

Find journal/news articles

Use information from journal, magazine, & newspaper articles to develop or update industry profiles, and identify industry trends. To retrieve the best results think about what your key words are before searching, e.g.,

hand-held computers and sales;
(banking or financial services) and industry and Canada;
publication title (American demographics) and (cars or automobiles)
;
consumer behavior and (trends or forecasts)