LibGuides: Marketing: Overview

Introduction to Guide

Marketing Research

Marketing research, as defined by the American Marketing Association (AMA), is the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information that is used to:

Identify and define marketing opportunities and problems
Generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions
Monitor marketing performance
Improve understanding of marketing as a process

This guide is intended to help you begin your research paper and/or project in the field of marketing and direct you to a variety of resources from the Thompson Library related to marketing:

Reference books (print and online) that may be useful starting points for research.
Books --over 14 million books available throughout the UM library system.
Article Databases (scholarly journals) covering your topic (over 75,000 journals)
Databases covering Company Information, Financials and Statistics
Industry Information and Statistics
Demographics information.
Search tips for the library catalog and article databases

This Guide is intended for the use by University of Michigan-Flint students and employees. Users outside UM-Flint may not be able to access many of the links provided.

Frequently Used Databases

Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window
Due to license restrictions, access to the 500 most popular articles from Harvard Business Review is read-only--no printing, downloading, or direct linking to these 500 articles is permitted. All other HBR articles are fully accessible to all current U-M students, faculty, and staff with no such restrictions.

Use Policy: When using material from this database in reports and presentations, vendor contract requirements dictate that you must include the phrase, "Used with permission of EBSCO Business Source Complete."
CIA World Factbook This link opens in a new window
Data Axle Reference Solutions This link opens in a new window
eMarketer This link opens in a new window
Aggregated from over 1,700 sources. Includes analyst reports, daily research articles, and e-business and online.
Help guide (pdf)
Video tutorial
Gale Business: Insights This link opens in a new window
Mergent Online This link opens in a new window
Provides access to current and historical financial information on 15,000 US and 20,000 foreign companies, both active and inactive, including firm description, statistics, and financial information, as well as annual reports. Mergers, acquisitions, disposals, joint ventures, long-term debt, bond ratings, capital stock and insider trading are also provided in the company records. Historical data is available for the past 15 years. Company reports and financials can be exported to Excel.

Includes Mergent Horizon data about a firm's products; its relationships with its major customers, suppliers, and partners; its competitors; its financials; and the industry space in which it operates.
Orbis This link opens in a new window
Orbis has information about 40 million companies, including 18 million European companies from 46 countries, 16 million US and Canadian companies, 6.5 million South and Central American companies, 1.3 million Japanese companies, 300,000 Chinese companies, and 90,000 African companies. Orbis includes information about 30,000 banks and 8,000 insurance companies.Users are required to enter "University of Michigan" in the "Enter your organization's name" box to authenticate and use the database.Technical Notes: Use of scripts or automated methods to download data from Orbis is strictly prohibited. If you require access to a larger dataset, please contact kresge_library@umich.edu.Use policy: When using material from this database in reports and presentations, you must include the phrase, "Used with permission of Orbis." This database is for personal use only, meaning that you should never share your log-in credentials for this resource.