Principles and Practice

of Marketing

Jim Blythe
9781844801206

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Useful websites for students

The following websites are useful for finding information on markets and marketing. Some are aimed at businesses, some are aimed at the general public: some will want you to pay for detailed information, but all of them provide some information free. This is by no means a comprehensive list of all possible websites containing business information: if you are not already good at searching the Internet, you should work at it!

Not everything on the Internet is true, of course: you need to be selective, and quite discriminating, about what you believe. The Internet is entirely unregulated: basically, any nutcase can put anything on there! Obviously websites change over time: the sites below may offer good information at the time of writing, but be less helpful in a year or more’s time, so again you will need to develop your own search skills, and a touch of scepticism.

http://www.startups.co.uk/ This site offers a lot of free advice to small firms, much of which is useful to larger firms or, of course, to students.

www.mrs.org.uk/ This is the website of the Market Research Society. It contains their code of conduct, and information about the ethics of market research.

http://www.mori.com/ MORI is a major marketing research and opinion poll company. The website contains some limited information about research they have undertaken.

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/ This website has details of Emerald journals. The site contains abstracts from papers: these should tell you whether it is worthwhile reading the whole paper, and in some cases the abstract itself is all you need for what you are trying to do.

www.mintel.com/ Mintel is another commercial market research company. The website contains some brief resumes of research the organisation has undertaken, although they will charge you to read the full reports.

www.keynote.co.uk/ This company is Mintel’s main rival. Keynote reports are very well-respected by practitioners, so the brief extracts contained here can prove very useful.

www.bmrb.co.uk/ Yet another commercial marketing research organisation, BMRB produces reports for industrial users.

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www.euromonitor.com/ Euromonitor offers a useful statistical service. Again, they will charge for a full report, but much of their information is available as samples.

The following websites are business periodicals, all of which have up-to-date news stories about companies.

http://news.ft.com/home/uk The Financial Times is one of the world’s most respected newspapers. The on-line version contains extracts from articles of interest to any business student.

http://online.wsj.com/public/us The Wall Street Journal is the US equivalent of the Financial Times. It has stories about companies from throughout the world, and articles of interest to business people and students.

http://www.economist.com/index.html The Economist is not only about economics: its articles include all aspects of business life, including (of course) marketing.

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/hbr/hbr_home.jhtml The Harvard Business Review carries articles from leading academics and business people, mostly of a highly strategic or conceptual nature.

Government websites are often extremely useful. They are usually aimed at business users, but of course the information is equally useful to students.

http://www.dti.gov.uk/ This is the website for the Department of Trade and Industry. It contains a wealth of information about marketing law, business regulation, and Government policy towards business.

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html This site is the CIA World Fact book. It contains statistics on every country in the world, collected by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. The information is comprehensive, accurate and usually up-to-date.

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This website is devoted entirely to legal aspects of marketing. It is possible to register with the website and receive law updates by e-mail as they happen: very useful if you are involved in legal aspects of marketing.

www.marketinglaw.co.uk

Finally, provided everything goes well with your course and you graduate, here is a very useful website!