Marketing 3703

Christine Adams , Subject Liaison

Maag Library, Reference Department

330-941-3680

Web and Marketing Operations Analysis Assignment

The following resources are some that you may find useful when locating information for Dr. Kittle's Web and Marketing Operations Analysis assignment. Each of these resources may provide pieces of the information that you need to complete this assignment, but no single resource will provide everything you need. Once you gather the information about your product or brands, you will need to analyze what you have found according to Dr. Kittle's instructions.

Print Resources

These are resources physically located in the library. While those listed are held in the Reference Room, other items are available in the general collection and can be checked out. Use the call numbers listed below to browse the collection on floor 3A.

The Marketing Research Guide
Ref HF 5415.2.M35585 2006
This book focuses primarily on original research, but also contains a section on using secondary sources of marketing data. Included in these sources are government documents, books and databases. Maag Library owns or subscribes to some of these items.
Market Share Reporter
Ref HF 5410.M35 2006 (2 volumes)
The Market Share Reporter may come in useful when you are initially seeking a product to use for this assignment. A wide variety of products and services are included in these volumes. The product categories are arranged by SIC number and each entry includes the NAICS number for the product. If you use the Market Share Reporter to identify a product for this assignment, note the SIC and NAICS numbers for the product; having this information from the start will help you find additional information about the industry.

To find books about your brand or company in MaagNet or the OhioLINK catalog, you can use several different pieces of information to search these catalogs.

Keyword search for the brand name
If your brand is sports drinks, you can search MaagNet for Gatorade and find that Maag Library has one book that specifically lists Gatorade. The same search in OhioLink gives a list of 20 items owned by libraries around the state. While not all of these items look specifically at the marketing of Gatorade, some do and can be requested from libraries around the state.
Subject search for the company name
The company that owns your brand may have a different name than the brand. Coca-Cola owns the Dasani brand, but there are no books in MaagNet or the OhioLINK catalog about Dasani. There are many more books about the Coca-Cola company, some owned by YSU and some owned by other OhioLINK schools.
Keyword or subject search for the industry
For some products, you might need background information about the industry or there may not be any books about specific brands or companies. If this is the case, look in MaagNet or the OhioLINK catalog for the industry. If you search for an industry such as clothing you will get many results. You can add the term marketing to the search to find books about marketing associated with that industry or product.

Subscription Resources

These resources are those that Maag Library pays to access. The information in these resources is usually not available through the free internet, but contain information that you may find useful when working on this project.

MediaMark (also known as MRI+):
MediaMark provides product reports for specific products and brands. Using the reports in MediaMark you can find which demographic groups are most or least likely to use a specific product. The demographic categories in the MediaMark reports include gender, age groups, household income and entertainment formats, including magazines read, television stations watched and internet sites visited. Not all brands are included in MRI+. If your brand is fairly new or has a small share of the market, it may not be included.

This information can be used to analyze the current marketing efforts for a brand or suggest an alternative marketing strategy for the demographic the company wants to reach. Are the ads currently in use found in places the company's target demographic is likely to view them? If the company wants to increase the market share of a brand, what demographic group should they focus on? The data in MediaMark reports will help you decide how effective the current marketing efforts are or what additional marketing methods the company should try.

For information about accessing MediaMark, using the database and reading the reports see Accessing MediaMark Online. You must establish your CUE-mail account before you can access MediaMark.
Business Source Complete:
Business Source Complete is a good source for journals, magazines and trade publications. Search for your specific brand name or product and see what comes up. Beyond articles, Business Source Premier allows you to find company and industry reports, SWOT analyses and market research reports. To see a sample of the different information available, select the appropriate link below and search for Coca Cola:

On-campus Off-campus

Try adding more keywords to refine your search if you get too many results.For example, if your product is cookies, you could try searching for:
- Cookie* and (marketing or advertising)
- Oreo^TM and (marketing or advertising)
- cookie* and demographic
In the first and third example, the * at the end of cookie is a truncation symbol. Using this lets you search for cookies and cookie with a single search.
Business and Industry
Business and Industry is another online database available through OhioLink. Business and Industry contains trade publications, business journals and newspapers, international, national and regional. The limit options in Business and Industry allow you to focus your search to specific aspects of business. Use the link below from on campus or off, and try the following:
- Type Coca Cola in the search box
- Click Show Limit Options to see these options
- Place a check mark in the box next to USA
- Scroll down the Concept Term to Marketing campaign and click that line
- Click Submit Search
- These steps will limit your search for articles about Coca Cola to only those about Coca Cola in the United States and that also cover marketing campaigns.
Access Business and Industry now

You can also use truncation symbols in Business and Industry. In this database, the truncation symbol is $. To use this symbol, place it at the end of the basic word. If you were still looking for information about cookies and using Business and Industry, search for cookie$ to search for both cookie and cookies.

Standard and Poor's NetAdvantage
Standard and Poor's NetAdvantage provides industry and company overviews. The information in this database can provide you with background information about competitive environment facing your brands or give you an overview of the company that owns your brand. Not all companies or industries are covered by Standard and Poor's, but the database does contain a broad range of information. This database is available from on or off campus.

On-Campus Off-campus
Newspapers are another resource for information about a brand. For a new brand or company that is not located in a large city, the development and marketing of that new brand can be significant to the local economy and receive corresponding coverage in local or regional papers. Some sources for newspapers are:
- Lexis Nexis Academic
  International, national and regional newspapers, many with full-text available online.
  On Campus Off Campus
- Newsbank Newsfile Collection(on campus access only)
  A good source for newspapers from around Ohio and select national newspapers.
  On Campus access
- Newspaper Source
  Regional newspapers and select international newspapers.
  On Campus Off Campus

Web Resources

There are resources available on the free internet that may help you with this assignment. These are primarily news and industry resources that you can use to try to understand the company/brand you are researching and the environment surrounding that industry. These resources are just a starting place on the internet.

Business.com
Business.com lets you search for news stories, internet resources or people affiliated with specific brands or companies. Before searching, select the tab for your desired search.
Google News
A simple way to search for current news about a company or brand.
Trade Associations
Many industries have trade associations with websites that can be a good source of information about the environment currently surrounding the companies. Not all associations can be linked from this page, but you might be able to find one associated with your brand through a search engine such as Google. When searching for an association, use broad terms to help find an association affiliated with the industry. For example, there is not an association for each individual type of drink available. There is, however, the American Beverage Association.
Company Websites
While there are still companies that do not regularly maintain a website, many are available for companies or brands. Use your favorite internet search engine to search for the brand name or the name of the company that owns your brand. This will assist you in getting contact information for the company as well as general information about the product.