Passport GMID is one of our premier market research databases. Learn how to utilize this tool to its fullest when working to craft a market entry strategy for consumer products. This video will illustrate some of the many ways you can use Passport GMID to inform your decisions. And, feel free to contact the Lippincott librarians for additional assistance with using this great resource.
If you’ve spent any time with our Company Information research guide, you know Lippincott Library has a number of company directories. Reference USA has a few unique features that make checking it out well worth your time. Reference USA offers comprehensive coverage of both currently operating and closed businesses, and coverage of historical businesses from 2003 forward. Reference USA doesn’t just cover businesses. It also indexes the U.S. and Canadian White Pages, and tracks consumer lifestyles, moves, and home purchases. Also, Reference USA verifies all of its information by calling the businesses it indexes.
Now that you’ve seen the numbers of businesses in Reference USA, let’s take a look at what you can do with them. Reference USA’s strength is the number of search criteria it offers to help you generate a customized list of businesses or consumers, and the visualizations it can generate from your custom results lists.
If you’re looking for a specific person or business, the quick search will meet your needs, but Reference USA’s advanced search is its real strength. You can search across any or all of Reference USA’s business records, which covers over 44 million currently operating and closed businesses.
In advanced search, you can limit your results by all of the standard search filters: company name, executive name or title, business or industry type (SIC code, NAICS code, or a keyword), by business size, number of employees, type of ownership (public or private), or by a business’s sales or financial data. But you can also limit your results with some Reference USA-specific filters like a business’s web presence or lack thereof, what social media platforms a business is active on, the size of their Yellow Page ads, or the square footage of their facilities.
You can also limit your results by geographic location. Reference USA offers the standard City, State, Region, and Zip Code geographic search filters, but their most interesting geographic search filter is the “Map Based Search” filter at the top of the list.
This search filter allows you to draw your own custom geographic region on a map of the United States and limit your search to that area. This search filter is particularly helpful for searching sections of states that aren’t part of traditional metro or city regions or for searching multiple custom or separate geographic regions. For example, I want to search for businesses in Pennsylvania around Pittsburgh and the surrounding area and also in Pennsylvania and New Jersey in Philadelphia and the surrounding area. I can do that with Map Based Search much more easily than with more traditional geographic search filters because I can draw an outline the area(s) I want to search directly on the map.
When you’ve drawn lines around all the areas you want to search, you can apply your Map Based Search limit along with any of the other search limits. Click view results in the upper right corner, and you’ll generate a list of every business that meets all of your criteria.
You can click into each individual record for a detailed company description and history, and you can download any or all of these company records. (Downloads are limited to 250 records per batch if you’re using ReferenceUSA on-campus, and 150 records per batch off-campus. If you want to download company records in bulk, you also access ReferenceUSA’s company records through InfoGroup in WRDS.) You can also analyze these company records by each company’s SIC Code, city, zip code, sales volume, and number of employees, and you can generate a heat map of your results to analyze areas of concentration.
Now that I’ve mapped out how to use Reference USA, I hope you’ll check it out. Lippincott Library subscribes to a number of company directories, but Reference USA’s unique search filters and data visualization tools make it a powerful tool for researching a specific industry or geographic area. Whether you want to see where new businesses are opening up, check out the competition in an industry, or find out how many businesses are in a non-traditional geographic region, Reference USA can help.
Exciting research is happening at Penn’s GRASP Laboratory in the fields of robotics and drones, and the applications of drone technology are being seen in ever-expanding industries. Entrepreneurs on campus, such as Josh Phifer, Vince Kuchar and Nichin Sreekantaswamy, the founders of Barn Owl Systems, are developing business ideas which include drones, entering business plan competitions and launching businesses. As librarians, we can begin to identify trends based on the number of questions we receive from our students, faculty and staff about specific topics. We can tell you, drones are hot!
You can search databases to which Lippincott Library subscribes to learn more about drones. As you search, note that drones are known by other names. Keywords such as unmanned aerial vehicles, UAV, unmanned aircraft systems, UAS, unmanned combat air vehicles and UACV are all related to drones.
IBIS World Industry Reports provide broad overviews of industries in the US and China. Here you will find a report for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Manufacturing which outlines industry performance, operating conditions and more.
If you are looking for a global perspective on the drone industry, use BCC Research. In this database, you will find more details about the technology of drones and their markets by application, type, subsystem and region. The report, Drone Technology and Global Markets is 111 pages of market information and analysis. In BCC, you will also find reports about the sensors and batteries used in UAVs.
For even more specific market applications of drones, Marketresearch.com Academic has a report titled: Commercial and Military Drones: Technologies, Solutions, Market Outlook, and Forecasts 2016 – 2021. Details about enabling technologies and applications are covered in this 186 page report.
In EMIS, you can access company profiles, research reports and more. One of the market research report providers in EMIS is Technavio which produces country, regional and global reports. In EMIS, search for Technavio and click on Technavio Regional Market Assessment Reports, and then switch to their Global Market Assessment Reports. A search for drone will yield reports such as: Global Commercial Purpose Drone Market, Global Defense Drones Market, Global Civilian Drones Market, and more. A search for unmanned will reveal reports such as: Global Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Market and Global Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Payload Market. Technavio reports often include a Five Forces Analysis.
Business Source Complete contains trade, academic and news articles which cover unmanned aerial vehicles. Search for words such as: drones OR uav OR unmanned aerial vehicles. From the results you can limit using the filters on the left side of the page. Here, you will find everything from an article with consumer drone ratings in Consumer Reports to video from the Associated Press of drone competitions.
Our technology focused industry research databases, Gartner, Forrester and IDC also offer some articles about drones.
Beyond the library’s subscription databases, industry associations and governmental websites in this field are also important to consult. The FAA’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems web page links to regulations and resources. The AUVSI is the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International and UAVSA is a subsidiary of the Tesla Foundation Group. Both associations connect people within the industry.
In rapidly changing industries, information is being added to our databases on a regular basis. Contact the Lippincott Librarians, and we will be happy to direct you to resources to assist in your research!
There is no shortage of symbols or numbers that can be used to identify companies, which makes trying to match company lists from different sources challenging. The more commonly used company identifiers include ticker symbols, CUSIPs, CIKs and ISINs, as well as proprietary numbers like D-U-N-S Numbers or BvD identification numbers. One of the less commonly used company identifiers is the Employer Identification Number (EIN), also known as the Federal Tax Identification Number. It is used by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to identify entities that need to file business tax returns. It is a nine digit number, either expressed as a single string (050155090) or with the first two digits, a dash/hyphen and the final seven digits (e.g. 05-0155090). EINs are not as readily available in directory and company databases as other identifiers. Where can you find EINs for company matching when you need them?
Individual EINs for a specific company are available from a company’s SEC filings; see Lippincott’s Business FAQ Where do I find SEC (Securities & Exchange Commission) filings? for details about locating these filings. On the front page of a filing, the EIN is listed as the IRS Employer Identification No.
It is also listed in the filing submission text files with the label IRS Number. You can find EINs for private companies if they have filed with the SEC. See for example the IRS Number from the complete submission text file from a Form D filed by Uber in 2015.
Corporate Affiliations, a directory database from LexisNexis providing corporate structure information, includes EINs in its records for public companies and some private companies. One caveat about Corporate Affiliations and the other resources mentioned below is that they often only list EINs for public companies, even though private companies are also required to obtain and use EINs. To find EINs in Corporate Affiliations, search for a company of interest and view its record. The EIN will appear toward the top of the record as FEIN.
Note that Corporate Affiliations is misleading with regard to the exportability of EINs. While FEIN appears to be available as an exportable field, it is not populated in the export results; a FEIN column will display, but it will be blank. Another LexisNexis option is to use the FEIN search in Lexis.com. Lexis.com is available to current Wharton students, faculty and staff at Lippincott; please contact us at lippinco@wharton.upenn.edu to set up an appointment.
Mergent Online includes the EIN in the header information at the top of the company record, labeled IRS Number.
These can be exported for 500 records at a time via the Company Analyst List option that appears on the results page after running a search.
After adding companies to the analysis list, click the My Mergent Tools button and select Company Analysis List. From the My Mergent Tools page, select Company Comparison Report. EIN appears as IRS Number in the Select Data Items area.
EINs for nonprofit organizations can be found in their IRS 990 filings, officially titled Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax.
See the 990s, Financials & Regulations tab of our Nonprofit Sector research guide for information about tools for locating 990s. They appear At a Glance section of each foundation record in the Foundation Directory Online.
The National Directory of Nonprofit Organizations includes the EIN in organization records, and also provides it as a field in exported lists.
Bloomberg has sent out a notice containing 10 Top Tips for Students. Go to this link to learn more: Top Picks for Students.
There are several Lippincott Library resources that contain advertising expenditure data, but only one that tracks it at the advertiser/brand/product level, by media, by market. That is AdSpender, from Kantar Media. AdSpender allows you to find out how much advertising is being done (in dollar amounts, or by units aka number of ads) over time. Our subscription includes a rolling 5-year period. One great way to use this during this election cycle is to track presidential campaign ad spending, down to the city level. This way we can see in which states the candidates’ campaigns feel the race is close and want to spend more, and in which states they feel confident in their winning Electoral College votes – a great indicator of where political advertising dollars will be spent.
Once you enter into AdSpender, use the Custom Reports menu on the left to click Create. First, you’ll be able to select from a large menu of Available Media – including Network TV, Cable TV, National Newspapers, Network Radio, Internet Display, and even Outdoor (such as billboards). Select all or as many media formats as you’d like to track and move them to the Selected Media menu. Or, click on the Media tab to select certain Designated Market Areas (DMAs) of interest. Then click the Next link in the top right (how you’ll navigate through all steps of this process).
Now we can choose the time period that we’d like to have measured. To check the date range coverage of the media format that you are interested in, click on Availability in the top right corner. Remember that our coverage is on a rolling 5-year basis. You also have
the choice of viewing the data as one large aggregated sum (Time Period-Single) or at a monthly/quarterly level (click on the Select Multiple Time Periods button).
The next step is to choose what AdSpender calls our Product Set. This is the company or advertiser or brand or product that you want to learn more about. We can search Advertiser names like Clinton For President or Trump For President to find their presidential campaign advertising. Double-click the correct result 
– it will
italicize when it
has been properly added to your report.
Step 4 is where it gets fun, because we can customize our report format to the detailed level we’d like to see. So, for 
example, I can break out my columns first by Media, then by Product, then by Market, then by Time Period. So I’ll be able to see, for each campaign, the spending on each media format then sorted into the DMAs that saw this coverage, then see the trend over time. Set any addition Report Format (e.g. to show both Dollars and Units) and Report Options you’d like (e.g. font and shading preferences), then set a title and hit Run Report.
The Report Viewer menu shows you all of the recently created reports within Penn’s subscription. The report will move through stages here – Submitted, Running, Completed. This can sometimes take a few minutes. One 
trick if you’ve noticed that your report is taking longer than you’d like is to hit the Refresh Listing link, which will manually refresh the menu rather than waiting for it to auto-refresh. Then you’ll be able to view/download the report, in both PDF and .csv formats.
And for more about political advertising, including how to find an archive of the ads and their creative content, use our Business FAQ: “How can I track political ads and spending?“
Welcome to the Fall 2016 semester and the Lippincott Library!! The Lippincott Library supports the academic and research needs of the Wharton School. Visit our website, contact us, chat with us, email lippinco@wharton.upenn.edu or stop by and see us.
Here’s a few tips to help get you started.
X marks the spot!! Lippincott is located at 3420 Walnut Street. Just look for the statue of “Broken Button“, located on Locust Walk at the entrance to the Van Pelt Library Building. Lippincott is located on the 2nd floor, west wing of the building.
Use our Lippincott Services Guide to learn about all of our services.
The Yablon Financial Resources Lab, located at the library, includes Bloomberg and Capital IQ terminals. This space is available to Wharton students only whenever the building is open.
Read Datapoints, Lippincott’s blog, to find out about business databases including content coverage and search tips. Posts also cover Workshops, such as Bloomberg 101 and other Library happenings.
Search the Business FAQ to locate the best resources to answer your research question.
Follow us on Twitter@LippincottLib
Book our group study rooms to practice presentations, hold meetings, and create content as a group. These include 4 small study spaces, 2 group meeting rooms and a larger Seminar Room.
Join friends for a snack in Mark’s Café
Make use of all of the equipment and programs available at the Weigle Information Commons .
Sign up for workshops including Bloomberg 101, Entrepreneurship, and Job Interview Prep.
LibAnswers is an FAQ/Knowledge database platform that has been in use by the Penn Libraries for the past year. The questions and answers in the FAQ database are supplied by Penn Librarians familiar with the typical queries of students, faculty and staff. The Business FAQ, Instant Answers, replaces a decade-old FAQ interface that was developed by Penn’s Library Technology Services.
The Business FAQ questions in Instant Answers range from the routine (“Where can I find the Wall Street Journal”) to the specialized (“How do I Construct a Currency Futures Contract on Bloomberg”). In the past year, business FAQs were viewed 10,000 times.
To see how the FAQ works:
From Lippincott’s home page type a question or a series of key words in the search box (located on the upper right of the screen) and click on ‘ASK”. Then click on any appropriate FAQ retrieved.
Answers typically provide definitions and a variety of links to sources.
When a questions is broad or complex, links are often provided to a Library Guide or to a Blog post that treats the topic in depth and which provides the name of a Library subject specialist.
Here, for example, is a Guide to Health Care which was linked from a FAQ on the subject. Notice that the Guide also includes an FAQ “widget” that will allow you explore further.
The distribution of FAQ questions and the number of views follows a typical 80/20 pattern; about 80% of the FAQs viewed are from 20% of the FAQs in the database. (See this article
for a discussion of the 80/20 distribution)
The 80/20 ratio implies that about 64% of the views will come from 4% of the FAQs, but the actual distribution is 64 to 1; that is, 64% of the views come from 1% of the FAQs. The single most heavily viewed FAQ (“Where can I find Analyst Reports?”) was viewed more than 2,700 times in the past year, about 28% of all business related FAQ views.
The word cloud below shows the relative importance of the FAQ questions.
The FAQ is just one way the Library can help you with your research. Here are some additional options.
Congratulations to the Class of 2016!!!
“Why can’t I get access to the Library’s databases?” is the perennial question of the recent Penn graduate.
Unfortunately, the library’s subscription databases are only available to current students, faculty, and staff members of the University of Pennsylvania. Once the school switches a student’s status from student to alumni – usually mid-August – access to the Library’s electronic resources ends. Below is a summary of the Penn Libraries resources that you can access as an alumni, both remotely and on-campus. We also have a few tips for finding business resources at your local public library or on the Web.
Alumni Services provides information on visiting the Library, Library Events and E-resources that are accessible remotely using your PennKey information.
Alumni also have access to some business databases on campus as shown in this list: Alumni Business Database Access on Campus.
Other options for Alumni include the local public library. Many public libraries provide access to selected databases for members. Check your library to find out what is available to you. New York City’s Science Industry and Business Library, (SIBL) rivals many college libraries. The Free Library of Philadelphia also has a large collection of business resources.
There are also many useful freely available web resources. Here are a few tips on locating and finding reliable information. First, check our Library Research Guides. Many guides include web sites carefully vetted by subject Librarians.
Many Universities, such as Penn, provide Scholarly Commons where research by faculty and students are readily available.
Use Google filters. For instance, when you are researching topics such as foreign trade or exporting, limit your search to government sites. To search for trade regulations in Brazil, use this search:
TRADE REGULATIONS BRAZIL SITE:.GOV
You will retrieve resources about trade with Brazil from U.S. government sites only.
To search for information from associations or organizations use the filter SITE:.ORG. Many organizations such as the World Bank provide free information. One great resource from the World Bank is the annual “Doing Business In“ survey of the ease of doing business in countries across the Globe. The World Bank also provides detailed information on each country including business regulations and historical macroeconomic data.
Google Scholar contains many scholarly publications from around the world. Many are accessible via the web. This can also be used as a way to build a bibliography that can be used at the local library.
The Library of Congress lists many resources, print and online in the Business Reference Services website. Check out the Bibliographies & Guides as well as recommended Internet Resources.
Large consulting companies often provide free reports. PricewaterhouseCoopers provides industry overviews and research and insights. Real estate firms such as CBRE provide quarterly international market research reports.
An easy way to access government data is through American Factfinder. Select your topic of interest such as demographics, economics or housing.
FRED, the Federal Reserve Bank, St. Louis, is another depository of economic statistics and research. This covers a range of countries as well as the United States.
The Thomas Register is the largest directory of suppliers in the the U.S. Many companies include brochures.
The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank providing information about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America.
Financial Data is also accessible on the web. Yahoo Finance and Bloomberg provide data on stocks, bonds and other financial instruments as well as providing current news.
Edgar provides free access to company filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It also includes information about the usage for various filings.
This is a sampling of sites that are available on the web. Good luck going forward!!
For more detailed information about the Library’s business databases available to alums, please look at our blog post Library Database Access for Penn Alumni.
In addition to the basic FX functions reviewed in our post on Bloomberg FX functions, Bloomberg also offers its robust charting features for FX functions. These functions are great if you would like a more visual representation of the FX data than the tables provided in the basic functions. Below, we have detailed five different charting functions that are particularly useful for generating charts for FX functions.
Most charting screens are divided into three areas – the control area at the top, the side panel, and the chart itself. The control area and side panel allow you to edit the chart information and add items to the display, such as news events or other additional studies or scenarios.
Line chart
The GP function produces a line chart that is excellent for visualizing trends for a specific currency pair over time. The default view is one year for the selected currency pair (ex: EURUSD [CURNCY] GP [GO]) If you just type in [CURNCY] GP [GO] the system will automatically default to the last currency pair you were looking at in any currency function.
The line graph displays trading information, as well as an adjustable line chart showing you the historical price information at a glance. The default display is one year of last price information, but you can also choose to display information for the last day or month, year-to-date, along with several other pre-selected options or a custom range. You can also display ask price, bid price, or inverse market price as opposed to the last price. Graphs and their accompanying data cannot be exported to Excel, but can be exported as an image or vector by clicking on Actions. Also, under actions, can view pricing info as a chart. You can also overlay additional currencies by clicking on “Security/Study”, or mark specific events, such as major news affecting one of the countries or regions, by clicking on “Event.” Custom charts can also be saved for future use.
GIP – Line chart for intraday pricing
GIP is another line chart that provides the ability to visualize trends for a currency, specifically for viewing intraday pricing over time. Where the GP only lets you see the last price (or ask price, bid price, etc.) by day, the GIP function let’s you view a currency’s intraday pricing over time up for up to 240 days in the past for a time series alanaysis that allows you to examine security performance.
GPC – Candle Chart
GPC displays the candle chart view of the GP (line chart for pricing) function. You can use this to examine trends in intraday pricing over longer periods of time than you can in the regular GP function. This function can be accessed by typing GPC [GO] or select “candle” from the control area in the regular GP function.
GPO -Bar Chart
GPO is a bar chart that, similar to the candle chart, allows you to examine trends in intraday pricing over longer periods of time. This function can be accessed by typing GPO [GO] or select “bar” from the control area in the regular GP function.
Datapoints: A blog from the Lippincott Library of the Wharton School of Business 