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ENGL105i: Writing in Business: Unit 2 Recommendation Report

Mini-Lecture

Watch this mini-lecture to learn about research strategies and resources for the Unit 2 Recommendation Report

Who is my client?

Who is my potential client?

Use the resources to search for potential clients.

If your instructor requires you to choose a local business/company:

Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce

If your instructor requires you to choose a UNC student organization:

HeelLife UNC
Search for UNC student organizations

What is the industry like?

It's important to know what's happening in your client's industry.

IBISWorld Industry Reports
Reports offer a high-level overview of 700 industries in the United States, including financial statistics, market trends, major competitors, and more.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Mintel Academic
Industry reports for consumer industries, both international and U.S. specific.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Coverage: 2001 -

What's happening with clubs at other universities?

Social media
Campus newspapers

Even if you're researching a club, sometimes it's helpful to learn about the industry, too. For example, if my client is the Carolina Beekeeping Club, I should find an industry report for beekeeping in the U.S.

Who is the audience and what are they like?

Who is the audience?

Market Research Handbook Series
These PDF downloadable ebooks are comprehensive, 1-stop shops for data and statistics about consumers and industries. Incredibly detailed so choose the most relevant title(s) to download and use the table of contents to navigate data tables.

Mintel Academic
Find detailed information about consumer behavior and attitudes, advertising, marketing, and more. The Interactive Databook has charts & graphs you can download.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.
Coverage: 2001 -

UNC Office of Institutional Research & Assessment
Find demographic data about UNC students- enrollment numbers by several characteristics, revenue, space (housing), etc.
Chapel Hill Open Data
Find a wide variety of statistics about the Chapel Hill community- community survey, bus stop locations, public safety, weather trends, Points of Interest, and more.

Statista
Contains statistics, infographics, industry and market research reports and publicly-available data for over 25 countries on all topics. Download statistics and charts in Excel, PowerPoint, or PDF.

Note: UNC Chapel Hill currently has full access to Statista with the exception of the Global Consumer Survey and Market Studies.

Access: Off Campus Access is available for: UNC-Chapel Hill students, faculty, and staff; UNC Hospitals employees; UNC-Chapel Hill affiliated AHEC users.

Citing Your Sources

Why do we cite?

Citations serve three major roles in scholarly work:

They allow you to show how your argument is built upon the ideas of others.
They allow you to indicate which ideas are taken from others, and from whom those ideas were taken; in other words, to give credit where it's due.
They allow the interested reader to follow your argument and confirm its logic by investigating the ideas on which the argument is built, or to further explore those ideas on their own.

Learn about APA citation format: Citing Information Tutorial, APA

Learn How to Cite Data

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