Marketing

Library databases contain important scholarly and popular articles not necessarily available on Google Scholar.

Situation analysis | Industry analysis | Environmental analysis | PEST, Porters Five Forces, SWOT | Databases

This content is useful for completing a marketing situation analysis.

Types of analyses

Situation analysis

A situation analysis provides background on a company's functions and performance from the micro-environment through to the macro-environment. Consider the following areas as a way to organise your analysis:

• Industry history and analysis
• Company history
• Product analysis
• Competitive analysis
• Environmental analysis
• Evaluation of consumers

To complete a situation analysis see Industry and product information guide and Companies guide.

Industry analysis

Industry analysis considers:

• How an industry is performing.
• The current status of the industry.
• The future outlook for that industry.

To complete an industry analysis you will draw from both statistical data and industry reports. See Industry and product information guide for a list of industry information resources.

Environmental analysis

An environmental analysis looks at the external business environment. This includes:

• Political and legal - analysis of legislations, regulations, government policies.
• Economic - analysis of exchange rates, inflation levels, income growth, debt and saving levels, etc. See Economic data for a list of resources.
• Socio-cultural - analysis of social factors that influence people's choices and include the beliefs, values and attitudes of society. See Country information for a list of resources.
• Technological - analysis of the impact of new technologies.

PEST / Porters Five Forces / SWOT analyses

• A PEST analysis is similar to the environment analysis, and considers political, economic, socio-cultural and technological impacts. Sometimes legal and environmental impacts are included, making it a PESTLE analysis.
• Another type of analysis is the Porters Five Forces scorecards. Michael Porter's book, Competitive strategy: techniques for analyzing industries and competitors, outlines his model for analysing the structure of industries.
• A SWOT analysis considers a company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It can be used as a tool for business planning, product development, marketing, and identifying future directions for a company.

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Databases

• MarketLine Advantage
  • For a SWOT analysis search on the name of the company.
  • Industry profiles include the Porters Five Forces scorecard.
  • Country profiles provide a PESTLE analysis.
• BMI Research
  Country and industry reports providing analysis and data on economic and political factors, risk, financial markets and business environments. Also includes SWOT analyses.
• Passport
  Access to information and statistics on consumer market sizes, brands, major market profiles and market analysis.
• ABI/INFORM
  Trade journals are useful for finding market share, sales figures, pricing information, and company and brand name rankings. SWOT Analysis can be searched as a subject heading along with the industry.
• Business Source Premier
  Includes MarketLine company profiles and industry reports, plus industry yearbooks and country economic reports and profiles. For country profiles search 'zealand country report' in the SO Publication name.

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Key academic titles

• European Journal of Marketing
• Industrial Marketing Management
• International Journal of Research in Marketing
• Journal of Consumer Research
• Journal of Marketing
• Journal of Marketing Research
• Journal of Retailing
• Journal of Service Research
• Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science
• Marketing Science

Selected trade titles

• AdMedia
• Advertising Age
• Marketing Week
• NZ Marketing Magazine

To find more marketing and advertising journals in the Library Catalogue search under the subject headings:

• Marketing Periodicals
• Advertising Periodicals

Find the meaning of marketing terms and concepts by using these e-books:

• Key concepts in marketing
• Dictionary of media and communication
• The advanced dictionary of marketing: Putting theory to use
• A dictionary of marketing
• Key concepts in public relations
• Dictionary of marketing terms
• The Blackwell encyclopedic dictionary of marketing
• The international dictionary of marketing: Over 2,000 professional terms and techniques

Search strategy | Where to search | Building on your research

Search strategy

• Analyse your research question. Identify the important concepts within the topic.
• Use dictionaries to help define these concepts or terms.
• Choose keywords that describe the concepts and/or terms.
• Determine whether there are synonyms and related terms that should be included in your search. A concept table can be a useful tool to assist with searching.
• Search using various combinations of the keywords/concepts, synonyms and related terms.
  For example: consumers behavior department stores, customers preferences chain stores.
  
   Concept table

  Concept 1	Concept 2	Concept 3
  consumers	behaviour	department stores
  customers	behavior	chain stores
  	preference

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Where to search?

The Catalogue finds books, journal titles, theses, multimedia and images.

Use Databases, Articles and more, or Google Scholar to search for articles.

For more detailed information on searching see the Business Information Skills Online Starting your search module.

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Building on your research

Here are some strategies that build on information you already have. Start with a book or article that is relevant to your research topic:

• Look at the list of references to find further relevant research.
• Search the Library databases for more publications by a particular author.
• Note any journals from the reference list that are likely to publish articles on your topic. Search within selected journals and set up an alert to be be notified of new issues of journals.
• Search for citations to your original book or article. You can do citation searching on:
  • Business Source Premier
  • Web of Science
  • Scopus
  • Google Scholar
  • Science Direct
• Some databases, such as Scopus, Science Direct and Google Scholar, also link to related articles.

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APA Style

The Business School uses APA style for referencing.

• APA referencing: A guide for business students
• APA style guide to electronic references
• APA style FAQs

Support

• Referencing
  Access a range of tools and support material to assist your referencing work.

Examples

• Quick©ite
  Use this interactive tool to view examples of references.
  Covers a range of styles used at the University of Auckland.