Skip to Main Content

MKTG 330/Marketing Audit Assignment: Company Research

Business Research Basics and Marking Assignment Support

Searching by Keyword and Ticker

When looking for background information for your company you may start on the open web. Let's consider market research for Apple. By searching Google for Apple you'll have a lot of results including retail stores to buy your iPhone! If, however you use the Apple Ticker symbol AAPL you will find the Google Finance Page for Apple, Inc.

Using Boolean Operators

When searching by keywords, once you have developed the search terms you think are relevant, combine them into an improved query through the use of "AND" "OR" "NOT" Boolean Operators. The computer recognized these capitalized terms as an instruction to search it's documents differently. Additionally using quotations around a phrase will keep search terms together to search an exact phrase and an asterisk * can help with a wildcard search.

"AND" operator results in sources that include both terms. For example, while the query: Diet Coke health might return information on diet and heath (ignoring the term Coke), or Coke and health (the incorrect soda); a search: "Diet Coke" AND health would ensure the sources find not only articles on Diet Coke, but that they will include its health considerations. If you want information about health considerations but not weight loss you could search "Diet Coke" AND health NOT weight. An asterisk can be used to return search results on a variation of a name. Health* can return results such with the words health, healthy, healthcare, healthier, etc.

Other good sources