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.
National Associaiton of Personal Financial Advisors
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority
Financial Planning Association
Think Advisor
Investment Company Institute
Journal of Financial Service Professionals
Journal of Financial Planning
Financial Planning
IBISWorld
Provides access to U.S. and global industry market research reports.
Statista
Portal for statistics and reports on countries, industries and product categories.
Library Catalog
Search for ebooks on financial planning
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.
Mintel Reports
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.
Authorized users (on and off campus) limited to current Villanova students, faculty and staff.
eMarketer
Offers data and reports related to digital marketing. Topics include advertising spending, digital marketing, social media, media usage, e-commerce, e-mail marketing, and device usage. Coverage is global.
PsycINFO (ProQuest)
Provides abstracts and indexing to journals, books, book chapters, technical reports and dissertations in all areas of psychology. International in scope; coverage is from 1887 to present.
Practice advanced search features with the interactive
PsycINFO Tutorial.
Business Source Premier (EBSCO)
Provides access to a wide range of academic business journals and trade magazines. Topics include management, marketing, accounting, finance, economics, international business, operations management and management information systems. Full-text access may be embargoed for up to three years. Coverage goes back to 1965.
ABI/INFORM Complete (ProQuest)
Provides access to scholarly journals, dissertations, working papers, key business and economics periodicals, and country-and industry-focused reports.
Simmons OneView
Provides access to the results of a National Consumer Study (most recent studies embargoed) encompassing demographics, lifestyle statements and consumption behaviors. Supports the creation of custom cross tabulations or quick reports. Compatible with Chrome and Firefox and requires Adobe Flash.
Services shall NOT be used for commercial purposes, consulting, or outside research projects
ESRI Business Analyst Online
Provides geographic analysis tools. Includes demographic, consumer spending, and business data.
For username & password contact linda.hauck@villanova.edu. Look for an email from ArcGIS Notification to confirm the invitation (check your junk folder). Account administration may take up to 3 days.
Access courtesy of the Department of Geography & the Environment.
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 Profiles (EBSCO)
Offers detailed reports on U.S. and foreign companies in a wide range of industries. These reports provide a description of the business, company history, key personnel, products and services and competitors. MarketLine Industry Reports are available from
D&B Global Business Browser.
D&B Global Business Browser
Offers public and private company and industry information including company profiles, market research reports from Marketline, Freedonia, Euromonitor and RMA updated with recent news, executive profiles and analyst reports. Formerly known as Onesource/Avention.
NetAdvantage (Standard & Poor's, Capital IQ)
Offers market information, company quotes, equity index information, industry information (including the S&P Industry Surveys), and economic data.
Mergent Online
Provides detailed financial statements for U.S. and international public and private companies, including SEC filings and current and historical annual reports for U.S. and International public companies. Data can be downloaded in a variety of formats. Also includes country profiles.
Access limited to 4 simultaneous users.
Morningstar Investment Research Center
Contains information on more than 30,000 stocks, mutual funds, and exchange-traded funds. Provides independent analysis, industry information, stock charts, portfolio building tools, and web-based educational tutorials.
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.
WARC
Offers information on global advertising and marketing trends including case studies, articles, reports, opinion pieces, and expenditure data. (Previous title: World Advertising Research Center)
Advertising Age Datacenter (AdAge)
Features news, reports and statistics about the advertising industry.
For off campus access follow these instructions.
Ad$pender (Kantar Media)
Creates custom reports on advertising expenditures across twelve media channels 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 Catalog
The 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)
Provides access to scholarly journals, dissertations, working papers, key business and economics periodicals, and country-and industry-focused reports.
Business Source Premier (EBSCO)
Provides access to a wide range of academic business journals and trade magazines. Topics include management, marketing, accounting, finance, economics, international business, operations management and management information systems. Full-text access may be embargoed for up to three years. Coverage goes back to 1965.
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)
Provides access to scholarly journals, dissertations, working papers, key business and economics periodicals, and country-and industry-focused reports.
Business Source Premier (EBSCO)
Provides access to a wide range of academic business journals and trade magazines. Topics include management, marketing, accounting, finance, economics, international business, operations management and management information systems. Full-text access may be embargoed for up to three years. Coverage goes back to 1965.
Google Scholar
Google 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 tips
Presentation