Reading some business articles in your area of interest is a great way to start getting information on the general outlook and conditions in your field of interest.
Generally, articles will fall into one of three categories. Each one has different audiences and purposes:
| Intended audience | Types of content | Example | |
| News articles | General public | Shorter articles Features, current events, new trends Written by journalists |
Wall Street Journal Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Milwaukee Business Journal |
| Trade journals | Practitioners in a field | Mid-length articles Industry-specific info Usually hands-on, practical, on-the-ground Written by a practitioner in the field |
Minority Business Entrepreneur Restaurant Startup & Growth NYSE Magazine |
| Scholarly journals | Scholars, some practitioners | Longer articles Specific/niche topics Report on original research or new theory Peer-reviewed by other scholar-experts prior to publication |
Business Journal for Entrepreneurs Journal of Food Science Journal of Information Technology |
Consider these differences when searching for articles. Each may provide you with different useful information. In any of the databases below, you can limit to any one of the types.
The above databases have more than just scholarly articles for your school research papers! You can find all kinds of information on a specific company or industry, particularly in the trade journals.
Try searching for your industry with some keywords related to what you want to know. For example:
"craft beer" AND competitors
"mobile app*" AND marketing
Other keywords:
| Competitors | Competition | Marketing | Advertising |
| Strengths | Weaknesses | Opportunities | Threats |
| SWOT analysis | Financing | Financials | Market segmentation |
| Costs | Pricing | Market share | Target market |
You can also use a tool called truncation to make your searching more efficient. Many of the possible keywords above have many variations of the word. So, instead of searching finance, finances, financial, financing... and all other variations separately, search for financ* -- the asterisk tells the database, find any possible endings of this root word after the C. (Some databases may use the ? or another symbol, but most use the asterisk -- look for a Help screen if you're not sure.) Some more examples:
Market* = finds market, markets, marketing...
Analy* = finds analysis, analyses, analyze, analyzed....
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