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MARKETINGWEBLIOGRAGHYHMGT335.docxIntroduction
Welcome to the marketing webliography—an annotated collection of websites specifically designed for MRKT students. Most MRKT courses require final projects or case studies for which you will be tasked to find outside sources of information and to prepare well-written and well-researched documents.
This webliography is annotated in order to give you hints and tips as to how to use the sites in your assignments. It lists sites of both government entities and private organizations, and sometimes names the MRKT courses in which you will most likely make use of those sites. Some sites are referenced in more than one section of the webliography. The information in most of the sites has multiple applications in the MRKT curriculum.
This is only a partial list of websites; your instructor may supplement this tool with others. The criteria for inclusion in this webliography are
· high frequency of use by MRKT faculty
· provision of significant free content (even when detailed content is limited to subscribers)
· maintenance by a reputable, unbiased organization
You may also want to visit company home pages, where you will find details and clues for search terms. Some larger companies offer their annual report online, which can give you an overview of current and future marketing strategy. BE CAREFUL not to consider a company's website a primary source of information, especially when dealing with a privately held organization. A company is not going to post anything negative or even neutral about itself; indeed, it is part of a company's marketing communications strategy to convey a positive impression of itself and its products. It is your job as an MRKT student to critically consider the information you see and to not just report it the way it is given. When paraphrasing company-provided information, be sure to indicate that you are doing so and to provide a larger context.
You will never be able to uncover all the data and information available on any given subject. Do not worry; if you are coming up with more questions than answers, you are doing a good job. Put your findings in context and make educated guesses as to what you still need to include in your assignments and papers. Be careful how you use what you find. Just because you find a "cool" fact does not mean that you should include it unless you can assign it relevance. Use full citations and references—not just URLs—to cite your sources.
Every effort is being made to ensure that the links we provide in the webliography are active. If you find a broken link, please e-mail your instructor, who will pass the information along to the correct UMUC staff member. As websites are constantly under construction, you may find that some of the menu choices discussed have changed; however, the relevant information can probably still be found somewhere on the site.
A note of caution: This webliography is NOT intended to replace your research in the UMUC virtual library. It is meant only to give you a good start on your research, as well as some places in which to locate terms to use in a library search.
General Business Information
Marketing plans, case studies, and most other types of marketing assignments will require you to uncover financial and market share data on the subject company and its competitors in the environmental scan or competitive analysis part of the assignment. You will score the most points if you can provide specific data verified by a third-party source.
The more data you uncover, the richer will be your critical thinking. It is important, for example, to have some knowledge of market share, measured in total revenues, units sold, or percent of market, when conducting a competitive analysis. Knowing the market leader, as well as the market challengers, market followers, and market nichers, is critical to the development of marketing strategy. Having an understanding of the macro environments in which a company operates is vital to the completion of a meaningful SWOT analysis.
When analyzing data, be sure you are comparing apples to apples. One source may cite data for an entire company, whereas another may cite data broken down by product. These are two very different types of data. In MRKT courses, the most useful data is by product. This information is a little hard to obtain from general sources, so you may need to refer to industry sources. The links below, however, are an excellent place to start.
Although much of the information available from Hoovers is available only by subscription, the site can give you valuable data on a company and its competitors. If you conduct a search, for example, by typing in Ford Motor Company, you will find all the various entities connected with that brand and will be able to investigate each one. Be careful to pick the entity most germane to your needs. If you need the US-only operations of Ford Motor Company, you may want to choose the first, Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan. You will see before selecting it that the company has sales of $126,264.00M (or whatever is the most current figure). Click on the company's name, and you will see that Ford Motor Company is #9 among Fortune 500 companies and #151 among FT Global 500 companies (or whatever are the most current rankings).
Scroll down the page, and you will find financial information and even backgrounds on the executives. Clicking on Competition on the top panel may reveal a list of direct competitors, or it may not. If it does, you have hit the jackpot, and now you know where else within Hoovers you can search to find comparable data. If clicking on Competition doesn't reveal a list of competitors, you will at least find the industries in which Ford competes (e.g., automobile manufacturing), and this will give you search terms you can use for exploration on other sites.
The Economist is a publication that gives limited but useful free information for application in marketing analysis. It is particularly helpful when you are conducting an analysis of strengths and weaknesses, as it reveals trends in science and technology, culture, politics, and business and finance. It also includes a tab, The World in [current year] (look to the top right), that gives a big-picture overview of different regions and macroenvironments.
The Economist is good for pointing out trends. Enter Ford Motor Company in the search field, and you may find out that car-sharing is a popular activity. As you can imagine, such a trend has important implications for a car company's marketing strategy and sales forecast.
The Discussion Board is a well-respected global business organization with member companies. It conducts independent and objective research and generates reports to help its members understand and deal with emerging critical issues. Detailed information is available by membership only, but The Discussion Board generously shares its top findings free of charge. Begin your search with either a company or an industry name—Ford Motor Company or automobile manufacturing, for example. For your environmental scan, check out some of The Discussion Board's publications. To get an overview of trends, click on the Practice Areas tab, then scroll down to the Economies, Markets, & Value Creation section to click on Consumer Dynamics or Economic Indicators.
Standard & Poor's (S&P) is the rating service for publicly held companies. It is a key resource for investors, and much of the content is accessible only by subscription. However, you can find plenty of useful free information. Simply type your subject, perhaps automotive manufacturing marketing, in the search field and see what comes up. Remember, S&P provides data only on publicly held companies.
· Forbes
Maintained by Forbes Magazine, this website is a good place to search for industry- and company-specific information. It is also a good place to find search terms. If your subject is Ford Motor Company, your search terms could be automobile industry, automobile industry market share, or Ford Motor Company competitors. In addition to uncovering stories for you, Forbes will lead you to useful sources such as the Business Monitor International (BMI) automotive section. Some of the publications it lists have a subscription fee; others have limited free content or free trials. Forbes Magazine may be helpful to you as well.
· U.S. Small Business Administration
If your topic is a small business, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) might be a good place for you. The US government provides a wealth of information for the small business owner or entrepreneur. Marketing students searching for information on a small business for a case study or term project may find information here on marketing plans, as well as examples of successful small businesses. You may have to dig around the site in addition to using the internal search engine, but it may be time well-spent.
Environmental Scanning: Data and Trends
As you are learning in your MRKT courses, you need to scan the environment before you can develop new marketing strategies. Key questions for the segmentation and targeting processes: what are the growth projections of your target market? where do the individuals who make up the market live? what are their income and marital status figures, and what other pertinent data can you find on them? If your target market is baby boomers, for example, demographic data will provide their current numbers and expected mortality rates. If your target market is middle-income households, you can find data on location, number of children, and so forth.
Likewise, you need to see what competitors are doing and what the industry projects for the future. The first step is to obtain the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code associated with your product/service or company. From there, you can find all sorts of government-provided data. Major industries have their own industry associations and publications. We list a few here just to illustrate; you may need to find the industry source for your topic through your own research.
These are official government and public sources. Most other entities take the data from these sources and report it as it relates to their industry; many sites you will find when conducting a search are proprietary sites of consultants who use the data to find new clients. Whenever possible, find the original source of your information.
This site provides a wealth of information on every conceivable industry. You can find data on people (consumer markets) and on businesses. This is especially useful when you are segmenting and targeting consumer and business markets and analyzing the competition.
For example, if your target market is individuals who work at home, you can click on People on the top left, select Commuting (Journey to Work), click on Work at Home on the left, and find detailed reports on demographics, occupations, earnings, hours worked, days worked, and much, much more.
If you are researching a particular product or service, you can click on the Business tab on the top left. The government organizes industries according to the NAICS. This is a very detailed system, and you will have to specify your industry at a fine level of granularity and, in some cases, combine NAICS codes to get a complete picture. For every NAICS industry, you will find background information, tables showing changes, and a comprehensive index.
A highly useful tool is found under the Data tab in the top middle: American FactFinder. Using the internal search engine, type in your topic and see what data you can find to support or help shape your opinions on marketing plans and case studies. The reports contain census data organized by demographics, geography, race, ethnic group, and industry.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) takes the pulse of the world's economic trends in its efforts to promote international financial cooperation. It conducts research and publishes reports on individual countries as well as on global economic health. The site is especially useful when you are dealing with an international topic and need to expand your SWOT analysis and economic environmental scan of world markets. If you are taking Global Marketing, this is a good source to use for case studies, the final project, and even the conference discussions.
The two most helpful tabs are Research and Country Info. Click on either and use the search field to conduct a search on your various criteria. The Videos section is a great tool for obtaining expert testimony on a variety of topics. If you wanted, for example, to improve your understanding of the financial issues associated with global development and how these would impact a US-based company's overseas expansion, you could check out the videos and learn from the pros.
The demo dirt website provides a wealth of demographic data and analysis for all the major market segments, including generations X, Y, and Z; baby boomers; matures; women; men; people of different races; the affluent; and gay and lesbian populations. The site provides both national and global trends. Within each of the categories are further categories based on psychological or behavioral characteristics.
This site is particularly useful when you are determining market size and making marketing mix decisions to effectively serve a target market. The editors at demo dirt take publicly available data and interpret it to project trends. A key job of the marketer in developing marketing mix strategy is to anticipate trends so that the company can meet needs and bring satisfying goods and services to market.
Use the search box to mine this fertile source. If your target market covers multiple segments, be sure to combine data. Scanning all the target markets is a good way to find new or secondary markets.
In addition to helping you analyze the current situation and project market share, the site provides a lot of information to help you develop marketing strategy should this be your task in a case study or final project.
Although the primary purpose of this site is to sell research reports at prices that target corporate entities, you can skim the research abstracts for free. Abstracts usually include primary findings that are sufficient for helping you to gain insight into macro- and microenvironments, industry forecasts, market segments, and other topics explored in case studies and the creation of marketing plans. You will need to register with the site.
The reports are divided by industry, country, and company. Use the internal search engine to see what you can find.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a goldmine of economic, cultural, regulatory, and political information on every country in the world, and this resource is a well-organized and highly useful tool, especially for students in Global Marketing. The World Factbook is invaluable when you are making decisions on entering specific countries and assessing the barriers to successful marketing in those countries. Check out the CIA website first for updates, then click on the World Factbook link on the right. You can view individual country overviews or develop a data set comparing countries along the dimensions of geography, people and society, economy, communications, transportation, and military.
Michigan State University (MSU) hosts this site, which is rich in stats and resources for anyone studying global business or marketing. If your Global Marketing assignment requires a current event, this is a good place to research one, and you may be able to find video clips as well as documents to use as the basis of your report. The site also includes resources explaining global business concepts. Many interactive tools are available or under development, such as country comparison tools and other study aids that will complement your course materials.
· Gallup
Gallup is a research company, and its primary purpose is to sell services to corporate clients. However, the website provides free content and findings on many of Gallup's research projects. This site is particularly useful when you need to obtain overall economic data and trends, either domestic or global, for a SWOT analysis for a final project or case study.
If you have chosen a privately held business as your subject, you may find that this publication has more of what you need than those that focus mainly on publicly held companies. Use the internal search engine on the site to find information that may lead you to an identification of competitors or a more accurate sense of the company's macro- and microenvironments.
A good deal of the content on the Consumer Reports site is accessible by subscription only, but the site is an excellent source of consumer information on just about every product category, and is a fertile place to find competitor information. It is probably worth your while to check out the site and, if you find an article or rating on your topic, to search the UMUC virtual library for the full article. You can also visit your local library, which probably carries back issues in print.
Marketing Associations
If you are a marketing major, or plan to be a part of the marketing profession, consider joining one of the major marketing associations, most of which have student memberships. In any event, these sites provide free content that can help you with your assignments and keep your marketing acumen up-to-date.
The American Marketing Association (AMA) is the leading organization for marketers and a trusted source for all things marketing. A student membership will give you access to all member-only content, including a career resource center. Student dues are $47 per year (as of 2012), not counting collegiate chapter dues, which vary depending on where you live.
The AMA provides significant content from its major journals and publications, including Marketing News, which provides the latest news on all the marketing disciplines. Use the search box or scroll through the publications to find specific articles (more on this below).
Also, click on the Resource Library tab, which will grant you free access to AMA case studies, white papers, AMA TV, webcasts, and podcasts. These showcase the most current research and professional practices in marketing. You will also find a marketing dictionary to use should you come across a term with which you are unfamiliar.
· American Advertising Federation
If advertising is your main interest out of all the marketing disciplines, the American Advertising Federation (AAF), like the AMA, offers individual memberships, although at this time there is no local student chapter. Like the AMA, the AAF offers career advice, guidance, and scholarships, among other benefits. The site provides membership information, but, unless you are a member, its other content will not be of much use.
· American Society of Association Executives
The American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) represents 21,000 associations, including trade associations, membership societies, and voluntary organizations. Tools include a Marketing tab and a Resources center. You may have to click around to find free content, but it may be worth your while, especially if your subject is one of the many nonprofits that uses marketing to raise funds, advocate on behalf of a cause, or promote ideas.
· Direct Marketing Association
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) serves the ever-changing world of multichannel marketing and boasts the largest membership of all marketing associations, attributable to the phenomenal growth of direct marketing via television and online channels. You can search under both News and Research to find articles and white papers.
· Business Marketing Association
According to Kotler and Armstrong, authors of Principles of Marketing, "The business market is huge. In fact, business markets involve far more dollars and items than do consumer markets" (2011). It is likely that your marketing career will take you into the world of business-to-business marketing; if so, this may be the professional association for you.
The Resources tab will take you to the Business Marketing Association (BMA) library of articles and white papers, podcasts, industry surveys, and market research. However, you need to be a member to access the content.
· Internet Marketing Association
The Internet Marketing Association (IMA) is only a few years old, its existence reflecting the recent but rapid development of the Internet as a marketing medium. There is no student membership. The site has limited content available via its News menu on the top right. It is the publisher of eMarketer Daily , a free, web-based newsletter. The newsletter contains research and analyses of digital marketing and media and of Internet marketing trends.
· Public Relations Society of America
The premier association for public relations professionals, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) also hosts the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA), complete with educational, career, and networking resources. Membership for students is around $60.
The PRSA publishes an online newsletter, Public Relations Tactics, available free of charge. The site also provides links to related content from Business Wire and PR Newswire, as well as blogs and podcasts.
· Sales Management Association
The Sales Management Association (SMA) is the leading association for sales professionals and is a partner of the Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management. There is no student membership, but the website has free (though limited) content under its Resources tab, providing blurbs and statistics from blogs, webcasts, and sales compensation plans, as well as job descriptions. Some articles are available for free, but most require registration. The site gives you citations, however, and you can find the full articles via one of the UMUC library search engines.
· Society for Marketing Professional Services
Marketing professional services such as those provided by lawyers, accountants, engineers, architects, communications professionals, and the like is the main focus of the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS). Student membership is nominal and well within the reach of most students. The website contains limited free data on trends and topics of interest to marketers of professional services.
The industry association for web marketing provides a free newsletter that may help you stay up-to-date on trends and practices in web marketing. Click on Newsletters on the top, and you will be directed to a page on which you can sign up for the Web Marketing Association (WMA)'s SmartBrief newsletter. There is no need for membership, as the site has corporate sponsors. Because of this, you must be careful about how you use the information you find here.
Marketing Publications
There are several online and print publications devoted to marketing. Some of these are the publications of associations noted above. Following are a few of the more common publications covering marketing issues, both in general and as pertaining to specific topics such as advertising, sales, and direct marketing. When designing a marketing mix—and especially a marketing communication mix—you may want to check out multiple sources.
Advertising Age has long been the bible of the advertising business, especially for ad agencies. As marketing practice has moved toward integrated marketing communications (IMC), so too has Advertising Age. Yet advertising remains its main focus. The online journal has an internal search engine, though you can also find Advertising Age articles when you conduct a search in the UMUC virtual library, as UMUC subscribes to the providers who include it in their databases.
Some of the nice features of Advertising Age are rankings of current advertising creative strategy and reviews of both domestic and global campaigns. Al Ries, one of the most well-regarded advertising reporters and critics today, runs a regular column you can find in blogs. If you are taking a marketing course in January of any given year, you will find the publication replete with videos and discussions of Super Bowl ads. Some of the richer content is available by subscription only, but you will probably not need to perform research at that level of analysis.
One note of caution about advertising and ad reviews in general: Do not assume that a creative ad is also an effective ad. Discern the IMC strategy behind the creative strategy before you judge an ad's effectiveness. Note key phrases such as increase in market share and increase in trial usage as you read the article, as these types of phrases correlate with advertising objectives. If you are conducting a competitive analysis, you may want to check out the ads of competing companies. These can give you clues as to whom these companies perceive as their target market and as to how they want to be positioned.
One section of Advertising Age is American Demographics. This is a fertile source of information on trends in consumer viewing behaviors, demographics as related to certain industries, and other useful content. The demographic trends are well-explained and are often accompanied by graphs and charts that further your understanding of the data. This is extremely useful when you are developing the target market and positioning sections of a marketing plan as well as coming up with marketing mix ideas.
All AMA publications can be accessed via the AMA homepage. Click on the AMA Publications link under the Resource Library tab for descriptions and content. You may find some of these publications popping up in your library searches. Marketing News, Marketing Management, Marketing Research, and Marketing Health Services may all help you in your coursework.
· Marketing News. This is the organization's monthly publication and is included with AMA membership. It covers all the marketing areas, from strategy to advertising, sales, business-to-business marketing, research, and sales promotion. It aims to be the go-to source or the latest on what is driving marketing, and it focuses on what makes a winning marketing program.
· Marketing Management. The course in which this would be the most useful is Strategic Marketing Management. This publication is targeted more toward upper-level executives and thought leaders who keep pace with the rapidly changing field than toward those still learning the industry. You may not have full access via the AMA website, but the site is a good place to conduct a preliminary search so that you can seek promising articles in the UMUC library.
· Marketing Research. The audience for this publication is practicing marketing researchers. Content might be useful for those taking the course Marketing Research.
· Marketing Health Services. Devoted to the ever-changing face of how health care organizations market their facilities and services, this quarterly covers e-health, database marketing, and legislative issues that could impact a health care organization's marketing efforts.
The AMA also publishes four peer-reviewed journals:
· Journal of Marketing
· Journal of Marketing Research
· Journal of International Marketing
· Journal of Public Policy & Marketing
These contain the latest academic research in the areas referenced. You may notice the journals as you conduct your library research; pay attention to at least the abstracts to see if the full article will help. All articles are available in the UMUC library.
eMarketer Daily is a free newsletter that delivers updates every business day, providing research on and analyses of digital marketing and media. The site has an Articles tab that can be useful to explore for trends analysis and for learning how companies integrate digital marketing with more traditional tools.
This online publication bills itself as "the voice of online marketing," with the latest practical news in e-mail, social media mobile marketing, web analytics, online advertising, e-commerce, and so forth. It can be a great resource for finding out how certain companies are using online marketing and all its derivations, or for coming up with ideas for your final project or a case study. As online marketing is the newest darling in the marketing communications mix, it is a good idea to seek out the latest information on best practices.
The Target Marketing site provides a wealth of direct marketing strategies that you can browse when looking to recommend new or revised target markets or direct marketing communication tools. There are tabs for each of the major direct marketing tools, as well as a research library.
A popular publication among digital marketing teams, Website Magazine has mostly free up-to-the-minute information on a variety of topics, such as web design, analytics, social media, Internet advertising, and search marketing. You will find this valuable when developing marketing communication strategies in marketing plans or other assignments.
Industry-Specific Websites
The listing below represents only a fraction of the websites that can help you obtain data on competitors, trends, and other factors affecting a company's marketing strategy. Be sure to conduct a general Google search on your company's industry to see if you can find reputable sources of information. Take care that the sites you use are not fronts for consulting companies. Those are not appropriate for academic assignments.
· Computer and information technology industries
Popular Press Sources
The daily and weekly press is an excellent source of information on companies, industries, and trends. Some news delivered in print, by broadcast, and online is free, but some content requires a subscription. In many instances, the popular press reports on information from primary sources and, whenever possible, identifies and quotes the primary source. If you find a news story about a government report, use the name of the report to conduct a search to find the original report. Always go back to the primary source for verification and further research if you can.
This list cites a few reputable news sources you can find in print or online.
· Time
Miscellaneous Sources
When you search on Google, Yahoo!, Bing, or any other search engine, you get a mix of peer-reviewed and non–peer-reviewed websites and blogs. Conducting a search via the UMUC virtual library or another library is always preferable to conducting a general web search, but a general web search can be a good means of finding search terms to use in the library.
A lot of what you uncover during a general web search will contain private opinions and self-generated content by unknown and unedited authors. Consulting firms generally design their websites to look authoritative, but their main goal is to sell their services. Use these sources very carefully, if at all, and be sure to cite the content as a private opinion, using one of the academic style guides.
Here is a list of non-academic sources you may find useful. Browse with caution!
A great place to find creative advertising executions, both domestic and international, is YouTube. This site may be most useful when you need to put together a current situation analysis. You can conduct a search on your company's product and its competitors and find commercials you would otherwise never see because they are aired in geographic areas other than yours or overseas.
Remember, you are viewing only creative executions and not the strategies behind them. For strategy, you will need to dig in other places, but YouTube browsing will give you some clues as to what target market the advertiser is seeking and how the advertiser hopes to position the product.
Be careful to avoid ads that look official, but that are in fact parodies or submissions by wanna-be advertisers. If the ad can't be traced to the company, stay away.
The home page of Strategic Business Insights (SBI), one of the more famous consulting firms for management and marketing, is also the place where you can find and take the VALS survey on consumer insights. The VALS framework for US consumer markets is excellent for identifying target markets and psychographic and media information on each of the VALS types. Many MRKT faculty include the survey in conference discussions and ask you to take the quiz.
The value of the SBI site lies in the fact that you can compare your company's target market with a VALS type and, to the extent to which you can match the market and the type, amass verifiable information on your market's likes, dislikes, viewing habits, and consumer behaviors.
· Nielsen
Everyone knows Nielsen, the service that tracks what people watch and what people buy. In addition to browsing current news via the News & Insights tab, you can click on the Reports & Downloads box in the middle of the page and find a stockpile of information.
A subsidiary company of Nielsen is Claritas, owner of the PRIZM segmentation system for consumer market research. PRIZM divides markets into dozens of categories and provides demographic traits, lifestyle traits, and a size based on US household and medium income data. This information is particularly useful for planning marketing strategy and developing new markets.
Those taking Consumer Behavior may be especially interested in this site. MRKT students preparing marketing communications plans can use it to generate ideas on how to reach these very well-defined market segments. A lot of content is available by subscription only, but you can find info on market segments by going to the Claritas site, clicking on the Learn More tab at the top of the page, and selecting Using MyBestSegments. For a tutorial on how to use PRIZM, click on the PRIZM interactive tutorial link under Resources on the right.
References
Kotler, P., & Armstrong, G. (2011). Principles of Marketing (14th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
