These are the key business databases that will provide you a way to search by company, industry (ensure you have NAICS code) and articles regarding both the industry and companies within a specific industry.
These are links to Internet resources that are valid for your class project:
http://adage.com/datacenter/ ---AdAge.com's DataCenter features premium content, including profiles of top advertisers, media, agencies and more.
http://www.brandweek.com/bw/index.jsp ---Brandweek.com is an online marketing magazine delivering breaking news, analysis and industry data geared to corporate branding professionals. Brandweek.com provides current reports on traditional and Internet marketing strategies in all major product categories and provides information on how to be competitive locally and nationally.
http://adage.com ---Advertising Age is a well established publication (also available in Business Source Premier). This website provides a number of useful links for researchers.
http://www.clickz.com/stats/ ---ClickZStats provides a collection of online facts which have been gathered from secondary resources. Especially useful is the 'Stats Toolbox' which is an archive of statistical data.
http://www.knowthis.com/index.php ---KnowThis contains the basic principles of marketing and advertising in clear, concise tutorials. Also included are numerous Web resources for advertising, selling, promotion and research.
http://marketingsherpa.com/# ---Marketing Sherpa, Inc. is a research firm publishing case studies, benchmark data and how-to information for marketing, advertising, and public relation professionals. Also included are interviews, surveys and industry-wide data
http://www.thomasnet.com ---Thomas Register of American Manufacturers' website is used as a gigantic "yellow pages" listing for U.S. manufacturers. For each product, a list of manufacturers is provided, arranged by city/state.
http://www.prophet.com/home ---A brand marketing website with interesting articles and relevant issues in brand marketing.
http://www.brandchannel.com ---Brand Channel provides interesting perspectives on brand marketing.