How do I... - Friday 08 November 2019

How to find information about a business sector?

 

When you are looking for information about French or International markets, market report resources like Xerfi Knowledge and MarketLine are very useful. However, they do not provide users with information for each and every business sector. Information search should then be completed thanks to professional and sectoral press. Here are some tips to find your way around:

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1.    Market reports

ESSEC Learning Center gives you access to several market report resources:

 

MarketLine Advantage

MarketLine Advantage is available in English only. This very thorough resource provides you with different types of information such as:

• National, regional and global market reports (France is included)
• International company profiles
• Country profiles (PESTLE analyses)
• Case studies on companies

MarketLine also provides you with:

• Country statistics (through the database named Country statistics)
• Information on mergers and acquisitions (through the database named Financial deals tracker)
• Company and brand shares (through Consumer Data Analytics) - see our highlight on this topic

MarketLine studies and reports can be downloaded and printed without restriction.

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Xerfi Knowledge

Access Xerfi Knowledge to find:

• Reports about French market
• Studies on major French firms quoted in CAC 40
• Global studies (world). To find them, use the filter “Géolocalisation/Langues” and select “international”

You can download Xerfi studies but not print them. Most studies are in French, but they are adding more and more content in English. You can find them easily by setting the resource in English, using the flag button at the top of the page.

Please note that the Learning Center subscribes to the “Xerfi 7000” collection and not to every service provided by Xerfi on their commercial website. We cannot provide you with the studies that are not part of our subscription.

 

Business Source Complete

Business Source Complete allows you to access International market studies. Some are MarketLine reports that we already mentioned but other studies from renowned publishers such as Business Monitor, Economist Intelligence Unit or Barnes are available.  

Here’s how to find them: enter a keyword and a country (ex: packaging and China) then select “Industry profile” in the “Publication type” menu.

 

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2 - Professional and sectoral press

Finding articles from the professional and sectoral press is a valuable addition to market reports. They bring a new perspective and updated information.

The French market: IndexPresse Business

If you are interested in the French Market, the key resource to check is IndexPresse Business.

IndexPresse indexes most of economical and sectoral press articles, from Option Finance or Usine Nouvelle to Logistique Magazine or Lettre des Achats among others.

Note that IndexPresse only provides abstracts for most articles. To find the full text of an article, search for the title of the publication on Discovery’s Journal Search. It will redirect you to the website on which you will be able to read it.

 

International markets: Factiva and Business Source Complete

Factiva

Factiva is often used to search the news. Nevertheless, it can be very interesting to check sectoral information as it includes many professional references from many different countries (France included).

In view of the large source variety, it is not always easy to find relevant results when looking for a specific business sector, relevant articles could be hidden somewhere among hundreds of results.

To be more efficient, you may use all available options in the advanced research fields. For instance, target economic sectors through the following field:

 

Use the “Source” field by selecting sources according to industries. This will reduce sharply the number of irrelevant results.

 

Factiva gives access to Euromonitor Sector Capsule which is not a press reference but provides users with little factsheets describing a market, its volume, main companies, main brands, key figures and market share chart.

It is not as thorough as a regular market report, but it can be a valuable addition to your research.

To find those factsheets in Factiva, type you research in the free text field (key word + targeted country: for instance Germany and Food) and select Euromonitor Sector Capsules in the source field.

This other guide will also provide useful tips on finding complementary market data.

Finally, in addition to our resources, especially if you have not found a complete study on a sector, you should also consult the sites of federations and professional unions. They sometimes provide access to a vast amount of information on their sector of activity. To identify them, refer to the studies or articles you have already collected, or search on the internet with a query of the type federation OR union + keyword of the sector. Another possibility is to consult a directory.

If you prefer the video format, here are tutorials about how to use the resources mentionned above.