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BCOM 214 - Fundamentals of Business Communication

Section 2 – Major Companies and Product Offerings

What you might include:

  • Top companies
  • Market share
  • Major products
  • Competitive landscape - how concentrated is it? How difficult to compete?

Search strategies

Strategies for Identifying Top Companies and Products

During your industry research in Section 1 - Industry Overview, you might have already noticed major companies and product offerings. If not, use Library Search and the industry research databases from the Recommended resources in Section 1 and try some of the following strategies to identify major companies and products:

  • Look at the table of contents of industry reports to locate a section on major companies/competition or products/segmentation.
  • Add keywords like companies or competition to the searches you created to find industry information.
  • For product offerings, incorporate keywords like products or goods.

Strategies for Researching Companies and Products In More Detail

Once you have an idea for the top companies and product offerings, consider these strategies if you need to dig deeper into a company or type of product.

Companies

 

1. Gather basic company information before searching in a library database
Use a general search engine to collect key details about the company. For example, searching “New Balance” in Google can help you find:

  • Official company name: Some databases require the full name.
  • Headquarters location: Helps confirm you’ve found the correct company.
  • Company type: Public, private, or non-profit. This affects where and how you can find information.

Additional Tips:

  • Public companies: Find the stock ticker (e.g., ADDYY for Adidas) to improve database search results.
  • Private companies: Identify a similar public company as a “proxy” to estimate financial information. For private companies, rely more on news, press releases, and industry reports.

Video tutorial: Public, private, or non-profit? Watch this quick video to learn the differences and how to identify a company’s designation.

2. Find and browse the company's official website to learn more.

  • Tip: Use the consumer-facing of the company's website, but also try to locate its corporate or investor relations site. For the latter, use a search like Google to search the company's name plus "investor relations". (Private companies may not have this site.)
    • Example: Adidas investor relations

3. Use the company's official name or stock ticker to search a company research database (see recommendations below).

  • Tip: Start with just the company's name. If you need to narrow results, add keywords relating to various facets about the company that you would like to research, such as revenue, trends, performance, competitors, etc.

 

Products

 

A couple of approaches:

  • For company-specific products, combine keywords for that company alongside terms like products. Example: New Balance AND products 
  • Use product keywords discovered while identifying major companies and products (above) as your search terms. Often these terms will feel the same as the industry keywords (e.g., shoes for the shoe industry), but not always. Consider using more specific terms (e.g., boots, sneakers), too, or branded product names.

Example

The steps below follow the search strategies outlined above. In this example, we will be researching one of the top companies identified in the U.S. shoe manufacturing industry: New Balance.

Identifying major companies and products

Step 1: Find the industry report for the U.S. shoes manufacturing industry in IBISWorld following the strategies in Section 1.

Step 2: Use the table of contents on the side menu to find the pages for Companies and Products.

Step 3: Review these pages for overviews, insight into the competitive landscape, and market shares of the leading companies. Determine if more details are required on any given company or product to flesh out your brief. For this example, we've decided we want to research New Balance in more detail as a the leading company in this industry. We might also research "men's footwear" as the leading product.

Researching companies and products in more detail

Step 1: Gather basic company information and browse company website
Search New Balance in Google or a similar search to locate:

  • Official company name: New Balance Athletics, Inc.
  • Headquarters location: Boston, MA
  • Company type: Private (found on New Balance website --> Our Purpose page)

Step 2: Gather research on major companies

Use "New Balance" or the official "New Balance Athletics" name as keywords to find company reports, articles, and profiles.

  • EX1: Library Search - search "New Balance Athletics"
    • Tip: Use quotes around company names to preserve as a single phrase
    • Review the # of results before applying filters - often times the company name alone will significantly narrow your results.
    • Skim results for reports and profiles.
  • EX2: Mergent Intellect - search New Balance Athletics and let search box suggest the correct company profile (titled "New Balance Athletics, Inc.").
    • We chose this database because its description states that it includes private company details.
    • Note: if we only search New Balance, most of the suggested profiles relate to retail locations and not the overall corporation. This is why it's important to know the official corporate name.
  • EX3: IBISWorld

Step 3: Gather research on major products

  • After identifying "men's footwear" as the leading product, we'll search that as a keyword phrase.
  • EX1: Library Search - "men's footwear OR "men's shoes" to expand results
  • EX2: MarketResearch.com Academic
    • Typed "men's footwear" in main search bar. First result shows a world outlook report for this product. Upon further examination, the table of contents lists specific countries, so while the overall report is global, we can still find information specific to the U.S. market.

Now you try — follow this example to search for companies and products using the recommended resources on Section 1 and below.

Recommended databases

Databases for Identifying Top Companies and Products

Databases for Researching Companies and Products in Detail

Not every database will have relevant results depending on the company, product, or overall industry you research. Research requires some trial and error - expect to search a few different databases, but not necessarily all of these.