"Company" describes a legal entity, whether for-profit or non-profit, engaged in making, buying, and/or selling products or services. Take time to research different companies before choosing one for your assignment. Remember that publically-listed companies (including non-U.S. companies that trade on U.S. stock exchanges) are required by U.S. federal law to disclose certain kinds of information while private companies are not. Be prepared to do extra legwork to find information about some private companies (including talking to company representatives, conducting interviews, etc.).

"Industry" describes a category of products and/or services. To improve your industry research:

1. Familiarize yourself with the categories databases use to organize industry information. For example, to find information about the video game industry in Passport, you would click Industries > Appliances & Electronics > Toys & Games > Video Games. Familiarity with these nested categories will improve your keyword searches. 

2. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) assigns a 2-6 digit code to all U.S. industries. These are also nested categories, with broad categories like "Construction" assigned a two-digit code and specific categories like "Residential Remodelers" assigned a six-digit code. You can use this code to search in some databases. For more information, see the "Industry" tab on the left.

"Market" describes a group of potential customers. These groups may be categorized by geography, demographics (like age or gender), and/or psychographics (like hobbies and interests). This box highlights databases that generate market reports. For country profiles and demographic information, see the "Markets" tab on this guide.

Follow these search tips to find peer-reviewed business sources. To learn more about peer-reviewed sources (how to know if something is or isn't "peer-reviewed", how the checkbox filter works, etc.), take a look at our Introduction to the Library guide.

The databases recommended for finding peer-reviewed resources above can also be used to filter to "Case Studies" (usually under the "Publication Type" menu in Advanced Search), but you will find the best results from the databases listed below.