Library Resources for
Environmental Scanning assignment (Richey)

Recommended Resources

1. Use EIU Business Intelligence database. Provides access to Economist magazine reports on global regions (non-US)

   For example: the 12/1/05 edition of Business Europe provides 2005 private consumption and fixed investment stats for European Union countries.

   This will be kind of hard because most reports you’ll find are by country. Worst case: just combine several of the major countries to get the overview of a particular region.

   Also the Global Market Information Database has reports on the major markets for consumer electronics.

   • Click "Browse reports"
   • Click "Major market profiles"
   • There are a bunch of consumer electronics reports

   If you then need profiles of different countries economic environments, use the Business Source Premier database.

   • Click "Country reports" (towards bottom left)

2. International demographic projections by country:
   http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbnew.html

   The United Nations also has a database:
   http://esa.un.org/unpp/index.asp?panel=2

3. ABI/Inform database

   • Click "Topic" tab
   • Type in "technology trends"

   Global Market Information Database

   • Click "Browse reports"
   • Click "Major market profiles"
   • There are a bunch of consumer electronics reports
      

4. World Markets Country Analysis has near term predictions. Reports are in right-hand column

   EIU Business Intelligence database has these types of articles but you’ll have to dig around. The "Country Monitor" reports in here have this type of info.

   The International Monetary Fund publishes reports on worldwide economic trends.

5. Use ABI/Inform (technology trend articles will also touch on these). Also, the U10 competes with the iPod, correct? If so, there are tons of iPod articles in the business press that examine its market potential from many different angles.

   • Click topics tab
   • Try a number of different terms including the ones give in the assignment ("political trends" etc. though these will probably be too broad. You probably will have to use narrower terms). Also "technology trends" might work (they often analyze other areas) and "iPod" (this will default to articles about Apple Computer but most recent substantive Apple articles are about the iPod).

   If the U-10 isn’t an iPod competitor, use the above methodology for the correct area.

****Remember, always critically evaluate whether you can rely on the source of your information. This is especially important when using Google, Yahoo, etc.. For example, this is a hoax site that pretends to be the World Trade Organization (notice they use the acronym of the WTO’s predecessor the General Agreement on Tariffs & Trade in order to fool the user) -- http://www.gatt.org/. They have a hoax press release on the site that says, "WTO to announce schedule for disbanding".