In order to make money, businesses obviously have to sell their products and services, and it's so important that it's a discipline of its own. Even Apple Computer certainly would never have been successful without the help of Regis McKenna, a great marketing expert. Knowing how to market properly means not only knowing a product, but knowing the markets you sell to as well (or perhaps even creating them).

The subject guides for business, finance, economics, and accounting or others may be of interest as well. Subjects as diverse as graphic design, psychology, and sociology may be relevant also.

DATABASES

EBSCO
As ever, EBSCO is a great way to do research. It is actually an aggregator, and that means that it searches lots of different databases at the same time. For business-related information, one might want to select these particular ones (to avoid getting irrelevant hits):

Academic Search Premier
Business Source Complete
Legal Collection
Newspaper Source
Regional Business News
Vente et Gestion (business journals in French)
Economia y Negocios (business journals in Spanish)
Hospitality & Tourism Index
Academic Search Complete


Electronic Journals
This allows you to browse ULM’s available journals by name, so you can know very quickly whether or not we have the publication you want.


JSTOR - The scholarly journal archive
There are many journals on JSTOR-- it means "Journal storage." You can search by issues and genres, and inside the article text itself. JSTOR brings you journal pages just as they appear in print-- and just about as usefully.


LexisNexis Academic Search
LexisNexis has devoted a specific part of its powerful database interface to Business research (accessible by clicking the corresponding link on the left of the front-page). Using it will be extremely useful as it has detailed company information, news, journals, and more. Also, don't forget the general news or the Legal Research option.


Mergent Online
This resource can produce a lot of things, including very detailed profiles of companies with codes, numbers, recent stocks, contact information, summaries of what they are, financial info, competitors, and more. Do remember, though, that it only goes back as far as 1997. If you want to dates earlier than that, you'll have to use the print version. As this time, they are shelved in the stacks.

INTERNET RESOURCES

The American Marketing Association
The AMA, besides representing its members, publishes news, research, case studies, and more. In order to read full articles you need to register, but it is free to do so. The free account is limited, however. There is also a large job postings area with various resources.


Advertising Law, The University of Texas at Austin
This page is in a long blog-like format, fitting almost everything on one long page. It explains different aspects of the law as they apply to given marking subjects, which appear in the left hand margin. There are hyper links throughout the document, and more links at the end.


Advertising Age
This is the companion site to the magazine of the same name, and can provide news, feature articles, RSS feeds, and quite a few interesting blogs.


Brandchannel
This site offers news and interesting articles about branding. Readers can post comments about the articles, and there are links to other issues. Current books in print about branding are reviewed. The site also has a career center and directory.


Commercial News USA
"Commercial News USA is the official United States Department of Commerce showcase for American-made products and services." This site is meant to help companies sell their wares abroad. It lists exporters by industry, and has articles and links on various topics also.


Creativity
This is the website for Creativity magazine, which is about advertising and graphic design. The magazine itself is large, monthly, and has article about ads, the people who make them, and reviews of ads. The actual ads supporting the magazine and the website tend to be industry-specific and aimed at professionals.


International Advertising Association
This association broadly covers all kinds of marketing communications. Besides the usual event and member information, the IAA also publishes statements on regulations, has a useful collection of links, and news. This website is also available in some languages besides English.


International Advertising Association Useful Links Page
This collection of links is so extremely useful, it deserves to be listed alone so that you don't miss it. Links are arranged by subjects within marketing.


The Gallup Organization
You can access topics, videos, articles and more associated with the famous Gallup poll. Each set of statistics begins with several paragraphs of text interpreting the numbers and graphs and tables.


USA Today Ad Track
This page shows USA Today articles that pertain specifically to advertising arranged by date.


As ever, there is always more to find, especially if you have a specific topic to research. Don't forget that NetLibrary is a big part of the collection, and that Interlibrary Loan can get you even more materials.




I must acknowledge the assistance of these excellent resources:
http://www.lib.lsu.edu/bus/marketin.html
http://www.iaaglobal.org/default.aspx?id=8f7892eb-6ec4-4edc-bc2a-77e9386242c1