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Business Resources

This guide provide information on industries, companies, markets, and more.

Industry Research

Industry research entails investigating the factors that affect entities that produce goods and/or services to meet similar market needs. The scope of this research may vary based on geography or other characteristics. In industry research, researchers must appreciate that an industry’s key characteristics (mature well-defined industries dominated by large public companies) will affect the relative availability and robustness of content. In other words, industry content is available along a spectrum. Tools popping out of a computer screen

When researching industry information, it is helpful to find the NAICS code for that industry. The federal government assigns these codes to business segments for data collection and reporting purposes. NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) codes were adopted in 1997 to replace the old Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system. Many research resources, such as databases, utilize NAICS codes for searching purposes. You can search many of the library databases by NAICS code to get industry information.

For example, if you want to analyze the Petrochemical industry, you would look up the 2022 NAICS code (324110) from the US Census Bureau link below. 

Industry Research Databases

The following databases are a good place to start to find articles, trade publications, magazines, reports, data, and other electronic resources that will give you more information on particular industries and their trends:

Other Online Resources

While you will find a lot of information on companies available through the libraries' databases, you may need to look to other resources online for additional sources. The following resources will help you with this research: