Business Research Methods School of Journalism, UBC

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Business Research MethodsSchool of Journalism,
UBC
Jan Wallace David Lam Library February 2006
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What well cover

• Whats in the David Lam Library
• Categories of business research
• Sources for company and industry research

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David Lam Library
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Reference Questions

• Undergraduates
• business plans, marketing plans
• debates
• course assignments collective bargaining,
  logistics, IT, transportation, trade, etc.
• MBA requests
• business plans, international trade
• corporate failure analysis
• other critical issue assignments
• internships and job searches

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Categories of business information resources

• Books and journals
• Corporate filings
• Third party research organizations
• Governments and statistical agencies
• NGOs
• Associations
• Financial data vendors
• Internet sources

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Sample Question Sources

• ABI/Inform/Canadian NewsStand
• Business Source Premier
• Statistics Canada
• Sedar.com, sec.edgar.gov
• Mergent
• Marketresearch.com
• Euromonitors GMID
• Government statistical agencies
• World Development Indicators
• Google

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Sample Question

• Toyota to build new auto plant in Woodstock,
  Ont., August 2005
• Toyota to expand auto plant under construction
  in southwestern Ontario, February 2006

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Business Source Premier

• Good first stop
• Aggregation of business journals, magazines,
  trade journals
• Company and industry analyses

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Business Source Premier
Business Source Premier includes company and
industry profiles by Datamonitor
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Datamonitor profile, cntd.
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Datamonitor profile, cntd.
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TableBase
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Global Market Information Database (GMID)
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Statistics Canada
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Statistics Canada, cntd.
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Statistics Canada

• Other publications
• New Motor Vehicle Sales
• Canadian Vehicle Survey
• Spending Patterns in Canada
• Canadian Vehicle Survey Annual
• Road motor vehicles, registrations
• Monthly Survey of Manufacturing

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ABI/Inform

• Similar to BSP
• 20 overlap
• Most popular business database

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ABI/Inform/Cdn NewsStand
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ABI/Inform/Cdn NewsStand
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Google
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Google, cntd.
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Google, cntd.
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Sample Question 2

• What are some major trends affecting
  Voice-over-Internet-Protocol in Canadas telecom
  sector?

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A few resources

• General business article sources
• ABI/Inform
• Business Source Premier
• Lexis Nexis
• Specialised business databases
• Gartner
• Forrester

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A few resources
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Another resource
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Company Research

• Investigating
• a Company

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Company information Securities Filings

• SEC EDGAR and EdgarScan
• - corporate filings with the US Securities
  Exchange Commission, required of companies whose
  shares are listed on US exchanges. 10K reports
  give detailed information about a company's
  business, markets, competitive environment
• SEDAR
• - Canadian equivalent of EDGAR
• - aggregates filings with provincial securities
  commissions

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Sedar.com

• Website for regulatory filings by companies that
  sell shares on Canadian stock exchanges is
  www.sedar.com
• US equivalent is www.sec.gov
• Most informative documents are Annual Information
  Forms, Proxy Statements, Prospectuses, Early
  Warning Notices

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Company information News

• News (UBC databases)
• ABI/Canadian NewsStand/CBCA
• Business Source Elite
• LexisNexis Academic
• FP Advisor (Financial Post)
• Investext
• News (many free sources)
• biz.yahoo.com/I
• google.com
• businesswire.com

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Investext
teekay
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Investext, cntd.
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Company information Financial

• Financial (UBC sources)
• Hoovers (very basic)
• FP Advisor (powerful)
• Mergent (powerful)
• Financial (free sources)
• Biz.yahoo.com/i, etc.
• Company Annual reports
• Securities filings (SEC 10K, SEDAR AIF)

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Private Companies

• There are far more private companies than public
  companies about 98 of all companies are
  private.
• Private companies are more challenging to
  investigate because they often do not often issue
  public financial statements or annual reports.

Private versus Public
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Private Companies

• Best sources
• - Journals and newspapers
• - Directories (BIV, etc.)
• - FP Advisor
• - LexisNexis
• - Rankings lists, eg, BC Business Top 100
  Private, Public and Crown Corporations

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Industry Associations

• Google
• Scott's directory of Canadian associationsKOERNER
  LIBRARY reference (non-circulating) (Floor 2)
  HS63 .S368

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Industry Associations
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Business Research