BUSA 3200: Advanced Marketing

To better understand a company, its performance in the market and the factors that affect it, you need to understand the whole picture of their universe.  This includes :

• Company’s financials
• Products and services
• SWOT reports (Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)
• Industry pressures and challenges
• Competitors
• Analyst reports

While you should certainly look at the company’s website, note that will only help you gain insight into that company's opinion about itself.  For other opinions about a company’s issues and performance, there are several types of resources that will help. 

Unlike public companies, private companies are not regulated by the federal government. Therefore, it is at the discretion of a private company if, and what, they want to disclose about themselves. It can be more difficult and time consuming to locate information about private companies. However, there are methods and resources including:

• Searching for the company and/or their principals in local and trade business publications.
• Researching public competitor companies in the same industry.

Hoovers contains company profiles, analyst reports, SWOTs, and market research reports under the NAICS code link..

• Search by Company Name
• Once on the results page, click on the link for your correct company
• Use the left hand menu to select specific pieces of information on that company.

Example of SWOT analysis from Hoovers: