Business Research

How to do business research on the web
Part of the problem is that people who need to do business research are either affiliated with a school of some kind or a private company, so the people who put business information on the web assume that people do business research can afford to pay for it. Further, the Web does not yet have a lot of full-text journals or trade magazines. There are, however, sites that do try to put together the best of business research.

Dun & Bradstreet: Business Research Provides company research online, such as sales, employees, financials, A/P performance, major events, credit scores and public filings.

FastCompany.com: Research Directory of Companies Online directory of articles involving innovative companies featured in Fast Company magazine.

Hoover's Company Research: Business Research Find information on companies with operations and products, financials, officers, competitors and more at Hoover's Online. There are also non-academic sources for business information.

Home Business Research is a commercial that is made for people who are interested in starting their own business and are beginning to do the research from home or their current job.

The Small Business Portal is the English equivalent of Home Business Research. Both of these sites with the more practical side of business research, concentrating on topics like finance, accounting, management and marketing.

The last group of sites are from a service called About.com. About is an expert service that uses experts in a diverse range of fields to create sites on their area of expertise. These sites have a large amount of information, organized by subject. You may also contact the guide directly and ask them a question if you do not find our answer on the web site. Two that pertain to business research are Guide to Marketing and Guide to Management.

From the IPL's own collections, we can offer you a collection of free, online business serials, a list of business associations and good reference sites - all personally reviewed by a member of our staff.

Finally, there is also a relatively new site for accessing an extensive collection of free, full-text articles from business-related trade magazines and academic research journals. It's called FindArticles.com. In particular, you may want to browse or search through its subsection for Business and Finance publications.

Without the Internet (or, the free Internet anyway) A good place to start business research is at your local library. Very often a public library will have business reference books, directories and subscription-only databases. Among these databases are titles like General Business File and ABI Inform, which are good for general research with some specifics. If you are looking for company or personal information you might want to try Global Access and Hoover's Online. Some libraries will also have access to Lexis-Nexis, a large news and information database with both general and topic-specific material. Most of these databases have print counterparts with similar information, so be sure to ask for both if you go to the library, and don't be discouraged if you can't find what you are looking for in one place.