Category Analysis
Bring yourself up to speed by starting with a market or industry report. These secondary research tools define catagories (sometimes not precisely as you would wish), estimate market size and growth potential, describe the competitive forces impacting the industry and identify key players.
Don't forget to take advantage of the links to trade news and associations to learn about the most recent developments.
For this project search for open ended investment funds or unit investment trusts or investment vehicles or investment pools(of which ETF's are segments). The NAICS classification for investment funds is 5259. It is sometimes helpful to familiarize yourself with related industries such as portfolio managers, or securities brokers or the much broader categories banking and financial services.
Additionally you will benefit by learning more about how ETF's are organized and operate.
SEC Mutual Funds and ETFS: A Guide for Investors
SEC Investor Bulletin: Exchange Traded Funds
FINRA ETFs: What You Need to Know
FINRA Exchange Traded Funds
Morningstar Investment Research CenterBrowse the ETF Investor under the newsletter tab.
IBIS WorldU.S. and global industry market research reports.
Library CatalogSearch for ebooks on exchange traded funds.
Customer Analysis
Market research reports are rich sources for understanding consumer behavior around product categories. Mintel and Marketresearch.com are particularly useful for understanding target customers such as investors and millennials.
Scholarly research (discoverable through ABI Inform, Business Source Premier & PsycInfo) on "consumer behavior" "consumer attitudes" purchasing or "decision making" may not always be timely but is typically reliable.
You may find some very interesting results by googling. Be discriminating about using reports that don't source data presented. See Business Sources: How to Evaluate Them
The following reports are examples of credible research sources on the free web. Note that they are published by respected firms and describe their methodology.
Schwab 2017 ETF Investor Study
BBH 2017 U.S. ETF Investor Survey Results
Blackrock/Greenwich Associates Global ETF Study
EY Global ETF Research
Mintel ReportsAuthorized users (on and off campus) limited to current Villanova students, faculty and staff. Mintel's published market research has been helping leading businesses achieve their goals for over 30 years. As a globally recognised market analyst, Mintel produces hundreds of reports into European, UK-specific and US consumer markets every year. Each report that Mintel publishes provides a unique overview of a market's dynamics and prospects, giving you the knowledge to devise informed and profitable marketing strategy. DO NOT USE IE6
e-Marketere-Marketer is an international aggregator of data and reports on digital marketing from over 4000 sources. Access reports, data and news about media usage, social media, mobile, digital advertising, e-commerce, e-mail marketing, and search across a wide range of industries.
PsycINFO (ProQuest)Indexes journals, dissertations and some books in the fields of personality psychology, social psychology, educational psychology and more.
Practice advanced search features with the interactive
PsycINFO Tutorial.
Business Source Premier is a full-text, scholarly and trade article database covering a wide range of topics including management, marketing, accounting, finance, economics, international business, operations management and management information systems.
ABI/INFORM Complete (ProQuest)The most comprehensive ABI/INFORM™ database, this comprises ABI/INFORM Global, ABI/INFORM Trade and Industry, and ABI/INFORM Dateline. The database features thousands of full-text journals, dissertations, working papers, key business and economics periodicals, country-and industry-focused reports.
MRI University Internet ReporterMRI University Internet Reporter is a platform for the results of a national consumer survey useful for gaining insights into target markets and their media usage.
Only currently enrolled faculty, students and staff may use this resource for academic research and teaching. Commercial use of this data is not permitted. Registration with a Villanova email address is required. Follow these registration
instructionsBusiness, consumer and marketplace geographic analysis tool. Access courtesy of the Department of Geography & the Environment. For username & password contact linda.hauck@villanova.edu. Look for an email from ArcGIS Notification to confirm the invitation (check your junk folder as it may land there). Account administration may take up to 3 days.
Competitor Analysis
The first step in the competitor analysis is to choose relevant competitors. The industry reports, news you've gathered in the category analysis and the case itself should provide insight into firms competing in your defined market.
Once you have identified potential competitors reading company profiles and reports (see the list of databases below) will be helpful.
Of course your'll scour your competitors web sites, but don't neglect looking over 10K's or annual reports for public companies.
Note that reports and data on private companies may be sparse, so you may need to rely on news and an analysis of their web sites.
Just as you updated industry reports with news, do so for the competitor analysis.
MarketLine Company ProfilesRecently rebranded from Datamonitor to MarketLine company reports cover both U.S. and foreign companies in a wide range of industries. Typically reports are 15-20 pages and provide a description of the business, company history, key personnel, products and services and competitors. Datamonitor industry reports are available from ReferenceUSA and OneSource
D&B Global Business Browser (formerly Onesource/Avention)Offers public and private company profiles and screener, industry market research reports from Marketline, Freedonia, Euromonitor and RMA updated with recent news, executive profiles and analyst reports.
NetAdvantage (Standard & Poor's, Capital IQ)Standard & Poor’s NetAdvantage is a comprehensive, professional source of proprietary analysis on industry trends, corporate activities, and investments. For non-business students, the service includes a Financial Education section with tools for understanding personal finance.
Mergent OnlineProvides 15 years of detailed financial statements for international and U.S. companies. Enables customized viewing and output to retrieve company reports and financials into software applications such as Word, Excel or Adobe, and enables accurate cross-border searches using a variety of financial and text variables. Also provides access industry and country profiles. LIMITED TO 4 SIMULTANEOUS USERS.
Morningstar Investment Research CenterBest known for performance and financial data on mutual funds, Morningstar Investment Research Center is also a great source for company data and analyst reports.
Marketing Plan
Crafting a marketing plan is primarily a creative project. Nontheless, 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 rigerous research on marketing topics in books and articles discoverable in the following databases.
WARCCase studies, news and data on global marketing and advertising.
Advertising Age DatacenterNews, reports and statistics about the advertising industry.
For off campus access follow these instructions.Ad$pender is a tool for generating reports on advertising expenditures across twelve media including TV, cable, magazines, newspapers, radio, outdoor and internet display on the level of industries, categories, brands, products and advertisers going back to 2007.
Library CatalogThe Library's catalog enables patrons to search & browse Falvey Memorial Library’s collection of books, journals, audio/video materials, electronic resources and more.
ABI/INFORM Complete (ProQuest)The most comprehensive ABI/INFORM™ database, this comprises ABI/INFORM Global, ABI/INFORM Trade and Industry, and ABI/INFORM Dateline. The database features thousands of full-text journals, dissertations, working papers, key business and economics periodicals, country-and industry-focused reports.
Business Source Premier (EBSCO)Business Source Premier is a full-text, scholarly and trade article database covering a wide range of topics including management, marketing, accounting, finance, economics, international business, operations management and management information systems.
Business News & Scholarship
These are key business database give you access to general business news found in mainstream publications and academic research journals. Search them for articles about marketing techniques, category trends, competitor developments and more.
ABI/INFORM Complete (ProQuest)The most comprehensive ABI/INFORM™ database, this comprises ABI/INFORM Global, ABI/INFORM Trade and Industry, and ABI/INFORM Dateline. The database features thousands of full-text journals, dissertations, working papers, key business and economics periodicals, country-and industry-focused reports.
Business Source Premier (EBSCO)Business Source Premier is a full-text, scholarly and trade article database covering a wide range of topics including management, marketing, accounting, finance, economics, international business, operations management and management information systems.
Google ScholarGoogle Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites.
Scholar search tipsPresentation
Linda Hauck
