What's on this page?
This page will be particularly helpful for finding secondary research for the Needs Analysis and Advertising/Communications Analysis section of your Marketing Audit.
Below, you'll find:
- Tips for finding research on the problem your company's service is focused on solving
- Information on keyword searching, including a video
- Databases recommended for finding Business articles
Photo by Shapelined on Unsplash
Needs Analysis Research Tips
Once you've identified the problem your company is focused on solving, here are some tips for conducing further research on the problem itself:
- Start your search in Omni. You will be able to search for articles, books, and more from different disciplines across the library collection.
- Consider which disciplines are interested in this problem. For instance, if your company focuses on post-concussion treatment, you may want to consider medical databases, journals, etc. Research Guides can help.
- Break down your research question into 3-4 keywords and brainstorm alternate keywords to maximize your results. See tips for Keyword searching in the next section.
Keyword Searching
1. Keywords are the most important words in your topic
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Is the petroleum industry contributing to climate change in Canada?
= petroleum industry + climate change + Canada
2. Also think of other words or phrases related to your topic (Synonyms).
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Climate change = global warming
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Petroleum = oil
*A concept map can help you come up with related terms to your topic
3. Search again and again using different keywords!
4. Use the limiters available like “Peer Reviewed” or “Date Range”
Scholarly, Trade, and Newspaper Articles
Best Bets
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ProQuest One Business This link opens in a new windowDesigned to help business researchers balance theoretical and practical learning, and acquire the research skills that will make them successful in their courses and careers, ProQuest One Business is a complete business library containing millions of full-text items across scholarly and popular periodicals, newspapers, market research reports, dissertations, books, videos and more.
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Business Source Complete This link opens in a new windowThis database provides full-text coverage of top business, management and economics journals and periodicals. These valuable publications cover topics such as accounting, banking, finance, international business, marketing, sales and more.
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Canadian Business & Current Affairs Database (CBCA) This link opens in a new windowThis database, with 600 full text titles, is the most comprehensive Canadian reference collection available today. Accessible to readers and researchers at every level, CBCA Complete features a highly-respected, diversified mix of publications, including scholarly journals, trade publications, dissertations, books, newspapers and magazines.
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Canadian Newsstream This link opens in a new window
This database offers access to the full text of several Canadian newspapers from Canada's leading publishers. This full text database includes the complete available electronic backfile for most newspapers, providing full access to the articles, columns, editorials and features published in each. Some backfiles date as far back as the late 1970s.
Additional Resources
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Conference Board of Canada e-Library This link opens in a new windowThe Conference Board of Canada e-Library provides downloadable access to all Conference Board research documents from 1998 and Public Policy research documents. Approximately 30 reports are produced annually to provide new insights into key areas of economic, management and public policy as well as periodicals on a monthly, quarterly, yearly and biennial basis.
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Emerald Journals This link opens in a new windowEmerald delivers all the resources of a full management library of over 100 journals. Key journals include: European Journal of Marketing, Management Decision, International Journal of Operations and Production Management.
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Factiva This link opens in a new windowFactiva, a Dow Jones & Reuters Company, provides global content with multiple language interfaces and multilingual content covering nearly 8,000 sources. Factiva provides access to global and local newspapers, magazines, industry-specific journals and newsletters, newswires, media programs, and websites. Company Research Tools Perform company screening on a collection of nearly 24,000 global companies using 26 criteria. Current quotes and market data are available. Instrument types supported include global stocks, market indices, mutual funds and corporate bonds.
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Google Scholar This link opens in a new windowGoogle Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research.
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Nexis Uni This link opens in a new windowNexis Uni® features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources from LexisNexis—including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790—with an intuitive interface that offers quick discovery across all content types, personalization features such as Alerts and saved searches and a collaborative workspace with shared folders and annotated documents.
