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BUAD 695 Project Consulting

Research Tips

  • Ask yourself as many questions as possible to ensure you are thinking critically about the subject.
  • For target market research, consider not just the age, but the lifestyle, gender, household size, location, culture, and other factors that would influence that market's consumer tendencies.
  • Alternate your focus between the industry, company, and the consumer (who would buy X product? would person Y buy it? what prevents them from doing so? what could the company/product do to change this?).

Starting the Research Process

When determining your research needs these needs can also serve as great keywords to use in your searches. For example:

  • Segmentation strategy
  • Target customer(s)
    • Psychographics
    • Demographics
    • Socioeconomic characteristics
    • Product end-use (b2b)
    • Company size (b2b)
    • Type of industry (b2b)
    • Geographic location
  • Marketing mix
    • Product strategy
    • Pricing strategy
    • Communication strategy
    • Distribution channels

Once you know your research needs, consider which resource to use to find the information. Resources to check include:

  • Marketing textbook
  • Company profiles -- library databases
  • Press releases
  • Industry reports -- library databases
  • Statistics -- library databases
  • News stories -- library databases
  • Annual reports -- library databases

Advanced Search Techniques

Exact Search

Using quotation marks in your query ensures your results contains words and terms you search. Instead of searching for the words individually (think "Diet" "Coke") it will search for them together ("Diet Coke")

Boolean Operators

Using an all-caps AND, OR, NOT, you can link terms.

AND is a great way to pair two different search terms (think "United States of America" AND "Unemployment rate").

OR searches for both terms ("United States of America" OR "U.S.A.").

NOT excludes terms ("United States of America" AND "Unemployment rate" NOT historical).

Filters

Check out the filters on the left side of the search tab. Especially make use of date and subject.

Not sure where to start? Here are some databases organized by research need...

These databases are a great place to start as they cover a wide range of business-related topics. They provide access to scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles as well as some non-journal content (company profiles, industry profiles, market research reports, SWOT analyses, country reports, etc.). 

When searching for case studies, use the advanced search tool and select "Case Study" as a Document Type. If this option is not available, try including it as a keyword or subject term in your search. e.g., case studies AND management