Industry Research: Home

• Define your industry as best as you can

• Dig for data in articles when looking for industry information look through business databases, but don't forget news articles and other industry sources

• As you search look for terms and synonyms and be on the lookout for terminology, names of major companies that participate in the industry, sources of data and other clues you can use as the search evolves

• Identify specialized trade journals and associations in the industry

• consider SIC and NAICS codes as tools

Sources for industry data, news and analysis:

SIC and NAICS codes can be useful tools when doing research on an industry or looking into a company's competitors.They are American standard codes and they essentially classify the industry areas in which companies operate.

The quickest way to look up SIC and NAICS classifications is to use the US Census correspondence tables:

https://www.census.gov/naics/

There are still some official documents using the SIC codes, but these were superseded by the NAICS (north American Industrial Classification System) codes in 1997, and in 2020 the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) asked for permission to kill the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC).

To explore SIC and NAICS  codes, you can also use the lookup function available in Nexis Uni Company Dossier.

Search tips

• Type the name of the selected industry
• Narrow down your search by using the limit Document type
• Select Industry overview