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Resource of the Week

November 20, 2007

Global Market Information Database

The Global Market Information Database is an integrated online information system covering over 350 markets in 207 countries. Information is accessible in four modules:

  1. statistics (quantitative data and forecasts on consumer lifestyles, retailing, countries, consumer markets)
  2. analysis (in-depth market analysis report format)
  3. companies (profiles of leading FMCG companies along with financial data, market share and brand information)
  4. sources (lists data providers by specific subject area)

Statistical data goes back as far as 1977 (but most series start in 1990) and is forecast out to 2015. Reports generally stay in the database for 5 years. 4 million statistics on industries, countries and consumers. It is possible to create a wide variety of statistical reports using this database that can be downloaded to Microsoft Excel.

Search tips:

  • An easy way to search the Global Market Information Database is by using the green search bar across the top of the page. For example, to find a summary by country with a general fact file, a statistical summary, a list of the latest industry reports and easy link to consumer lifestyles click on the word geographies. Use the drop down menu to pick the region of the world you are interested in and then select the country from the region page. You can also use this bar to search general reports by industry, country, company and consumer.

  • Another way to search the Global Market Information Database is by using the search functions available in the gray bar on the left side of the main page. This allows you to combine more than one of the main search categories more easily.
    For example you could search for chocolate use in the United State and Japan.
    1. First you would click on consumer markets under the industry category.
    2. A tree of all the main consumer market areas will appear.
    3. Click on the plus sign by the one closest to the product you want, in this case packaged food.
    4. The packaged food category would then expand to include a category that includes confectionery.
    5. Clicking on the plus sign by confectionary will bring you to a list of confectionary items and you can
    6. click in the box next to Chocolate confectionery. When a category has expanded to its maximum level a minus sign will appear by the main heading.
    7. Once you have selected chocolate, click on the next button and you will be taken to a page that will allow you to select countries or regions of the world.

    Clicking on the red run search button at the bottom of the page will then display a list of all available reports, both on the industry and the companies involved in that industry.

  • There is more than one way to review the results. You can click on an individual report to display it. You can click on build my selections to develop a time series based on the statistics. Several types of statistical reports are available. The easiest way to get a list of them and help in creating them is to click on the help icon available once you have done your search and have a results page. Among other things you can sum statistics, calculate data as a percentage of the total and export data to Microsoft excel.

    Where is it: Go to the UNLV Libraries' home page http://www.library.unlv.edu. Select the Articles and Databases tab, click on the A-Z List of Databases and then on the letter G and select Global Market Information Database.

    Quick Link: http://www.portal.euromonitor.com/portal/server.pt

    • Posted by Shelley Heaton on November 20, 2007 4:54 PM |

    November 14, 2007

    EconLit

    EconLit, the American Economic Association’s electronic database, is the world’s foremost source of references to economic literature. It is a reliable source of citations and abstracts to economic research dating back to 1969. It provides links to full-text articles in all fields of economics, including capital markets, country studies, econometrics, economic forecasting, environmental economics, government regulations, labor economics, monetary theory, urban economics and much more.

    EconLit uses a controlled vocabulary of keywords to index six types of records: journal articles, books, collective volume articles, dissertations, working papers, and full text book reviews from the Journal of Economic Literature. Examples of publications indexed in EconLit include: Accounting Review, Advances in Macroeconomics, African Finance Journal, American Economist, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Business Economics, Canadian Journal of Development Studies, Harvard Business Review, Journal of Applied Business Research, Marketing Science, Policy, Small Business Economics, Technology Analysis and Strategic Management, etc. EconLit records include abstracts of books, journal articles, and working papers published by the Cambridge University Press. These sources bring the total records available in the database to more than 785,000.

    Search tips:

    • To export items to the RefWorks software:
      1. Click on add to folder by the items you want to include.
      2. When you are ready to export them to RefWorks, click on the word folder at the top of the page.
      3. Then click on the word export and select direct export to RefWorks.
      4. Finally, click on the word save. This will open a window to allow you to log in to your RefWorks account and complete the export.

    • The wildcard is represented by a question mark ?. To use the wildcard, enter your search terms and replace each unknown character with a ?. EBSCOhost finds all citations of that word with the ? replaced by a letter.

      For example, type ne?t to find all citations containing neat, nest or next. Truncation is represented by an asterisk (*). To use truncation, enter the root of a search term and replace the ending with an *. EBSCOhost finds all forms of that word. For example, type comput* to find the words computer or computing.

    • EBSCOhost treats certain words as "stop words" for example, and, or and not. Stop words are always ignored, even if they are enclosed in quotation marks. Stop words are commonly used words such as articles, pronouns and prepositions. Stop words are not added to the search dictionary, since their relevance is minimal, but they are counted as words for proximity (the distance between words).

      The search engine ignores stop words (such as the, for, of and after), finding any single word in its place. For example, if you entered company of America, it would find company of America, company in America, or company for America. It would not find company of the America, because the search engine retains a word distance. The stop word or will be replaced with any word. For example if you searched for sink "or" swim, the results could include sink don't swim. If you enter two stop words, it will find any two words in the place of the stop words. For example, if you searched for company of the America, EBSCOhost finds any two words in the place of the stop words.

    Where is it: Go to the UNLV Libraries' home page http://www.library.unlv.edu. Select the Articles and Databases tab, click on the A-Z List of Databases and then on the letter E and select EconLit.

    Quick Link: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=ehost&defaultdb=ecn

    Posted by Shelley Heaton on November 14, 2007 4:26 PM |

    November 5, 2007

    PAIS

    PAIS, from the Public Affairs Information Service, provides access to the literature of public policy, social policy, and the social sciences in general. It contains references to more than 553,300 journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, conference reports, publications of international agencies, microfiche, Internet material, and more. Newspapers and newsletters are not indexed.

    PAIS International includes publications from over 120 countries throughout the world. In addition to English, some of the indexed materials are published in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

    Search tips:

    • Use the advanced search mode for the most powerful search. Within the advanced search mode you can use Boolean operators which define the relationships between words or groups of words. They are: AND which is used to narrow the search and retrieve records containing all of the words it separates. OR which is used to broaden a search and retrieve records containing any of the words it separates. The | symbol can be used instead of the word OR, for example mice | rats is the same as mice or rats. NOT which is used to narrow a search and retrieve records that do not contain the term following it.

    • Truncation can be used in the advanced mode to include all forms of a root word. The * after a word retrieves all possible endings for that root, for example patent* will retrieve patent, patents patentable etc. Using * within a word will find alternative spellings of a word and can stand for an unlimited number of characters. For example, behavi*r retrieves behavior or behavior. For finding only one character use a ?.
      Each ? will represent one character. For example carbon fib?? will retrieve carbon fiber or carbon fibre. The ? is useful in restricting the number of possible characters retrieved.

    • Proximity searches, within the advanced search mode, limit the number of words between your search terms. If you do not use a proximity operator, the search engine assumes you want the words immediately adjacent to one another in the exact order entered. The proximity operator within “x” finds words within a specified radius. For example carbon within 3 fiber retrieves records that contain carbon and fiber in any order and within a three word radius of one another. Near is used to find words within ten words of each other. Before finds words in a specific order, for example social before security, but not necessarily adjacent to each other. After can be used similarly to before, but for the opposite order relationship. Use double quotes to search for the words “near”, “before” or “after” as a term or part of a phrase.

    Where is it: Go to the UNLV Libraries' home page http://www.library.unlv.edu. Select the Articles and Databases tab, click on the A-Z List of Databases and then on the letter P and select PAIS.

    Quick Link:
    http://www.csa.com/htbin/dbrng.cgi?username=lasv7&access=lasv77&db=pais-set-c"

    Posted by Shelley Heaton on November 5, 2007 3:33 PM |