Category

Lincoln Financial Group operates in many financial services categories including retirement plan services, annuities, life insurance and group non-medical insurance.  

Reading industry and market research reports are an efficient way to understand business activities, operating conditions, and the competitive environment.  Update reports by searching business news databases.

Find industry and market research reports by seaching keywords or classification codes such as NAICS.  

  • NAICS 5341 Life Insurance & Annuities
  • NAICS 52512 Health & Welfare Funds
  • NAICS 52511 Retirement & Pension Plans
  • NAICS 52519 Workers Compensation & Other Insurance Funds
  IBISWorld
Provides access to U.S. and global industry market research reports.

  D&B Hoovers
Choose the Industries tile, browse the D&B Industries or change to NAICS and browse or search by keyword, select the industry and navigate to all market research reports.

  ABI/INFORM Collection (ProQuest)
Type keywords describing the industry in the search box (sometimes it's helpful to use the dropdown to limit to title or abstract), scroll to document type and check off industry report, market research, market report.

  Business Source Premier (EBSCO)
Use the search box to type keywords for the industry. Consider using the drop down to limit to title or abstract. Scroll down to document type and check industry report.

  NetAdvantage (Standard & Poor's Capital IQ)
Select the Markets tab, navigate to Financials, select Industry Surveys.

  Statista
Provides curated statistics on industries (not really reports or analysis). Also useful to pointing to organizations and publications that follow particular industries.

  eMarketer
Offers data and reports related to digital marketing. Topics include advertising spending, digital marketing, social media, media usage, e-commerce, email marketing, and device usage. Coverage is global.

Trade and professional associations are another good way to learn about developments in a particular industry.  Some limit access to members, but almost all provide publically facing analysis about the advocacy work they do.   Industry reports often list important associations.  You can also find them by doing a google search for the keywords + association site:.org. 

 

 

Competitors

Competitors will be identified via industry reports and company profiles.  Company databases listed below can be used to screen for companies similar to LFG or you can pull the Lincoln National Corp profile to find peers.

MarketLine and D&B Hoovers often include SWOT analysis of companies.  Customize your SWOT analysis by gathering information about competitors by reviewing their web sites, SEC filings where available and from the business news.

  MarketLine Company Profiles (EBSCO)

  Mergent Online  Limitations on Use

  D&B Hoovers

  Morningstar Investing Center

  NetAdvantage (Standard & Poor's Capital IQ)

customer Analysis

Market research reports published on categories or customer groups are a great place to begin the customer analysis.  Census data and commercial surveys are also information rich.

  Catalyst MRI Simmons
Provides access to the results of a National Consumer Study (most recent studies embargoed) encompassing demographics, lifestyle statements, and consumer behaviors. Supports the creation of custom cross tabulations or quick reports.

  Explore Census Data

  Data-Planet (Sage)

  Mintel Insights & Analytics  Limitations on Use
Offers product and industry market research reports covering U.S. and international marketplaces. Each report combines data and analysis of the competitive landscape, supply chain, market-share size and trends, and consumer profiles. Analytics advance search monitors new product activity in consumer packaged goods markets worldwide.

  MarketResearch.com Academic  Limitations on Use
Provides marketing reports for many industries and demographic reports on a variety of age groups. Documents are formatted as Adobe Acrobat or PowerPoint files.

  ESRI Business Analyst Online  Tutorial  Access Instructions
Provides geographic analysis tools. Includes demographic, consumer spending, and business data.
Access courtesy of the Department of Geography & the Environment.

Marketing Plan

Crafting a marketing plan is primarily a creative project.  Nonetheless, expect to be able to defend your marketing recommendations by referring to studies and cases evaluating similar techniques.  You can find "how to", practitioner advice and rigorous research on marketing topics in books and articles discoverable in the following databases.

  WARC
Offers information on global advertising and marketing trends including case studies, articles, reports, opinion pieces, and expenditure data. Formerly known as World Advertising Research Center.

  Advertising Insights (Kantar Media)  Tutorial
Creates custom reports on advertising expenditures across media channels including TV, magazines, newspapers, radio, outdoor and internet displays on the level of industries, categories, brands, products, and advertisers going back to 2017. Formerly known as Ad$pender.

  Catalyst MRI Simmons
Find out which media properties your target customer frequents in order to reach her.

  Falvey Book Search

business news

  ABI/INFORM Collection (ProQuest)

  Business Source Premier (EBSCO)

  Factiva (Dow Jones)
Provides access to international, national and local news sources. Many different news media such as newspapers, magazines, wires, blogs and transcripts are aggregated in English and foreign languages. The content is current and archival. Industry, company and market profiles are also provided.

  Nexis Uni  Limitations on Use