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MKT 374: Buyer Behavior: Getting Started

This guide provides tips for finding articles on business topics from reliable sources.

Best Databases to Try First

Search many different newspapers, magazines, and journals at one time.  This search is best when you don't know the name of a specific magazine to search.  Below is a listing of just a few key business databases you will use often.  

 

To see a list of the databases that we have, go to:

Library Databases & Reference Sources

To limit to just business-related database, select the topic "Business" in the right-hand column.

Find a Specific Newspaper or Magazine

If you are looking for articles from a specific title, like Fortune magazine, this link will take you to a search engine that will display the database that has the title or if it's available in print in the library.  It also tells the dates we have available.  

Our Journal List

Article Search Tips

Keywords  

The words that you put in the search boxes in the databases determine whether you get good results.  

 

Here are tips for choosing keywords:

* Try using nouns (person, place or thing).  Other parts of speech are rarely used. Most databases do not search for short words like: a, an, the, as, in, of, if, it. etc. 

 

* Try using synonyms (words that mean almost the same thing). ex: commercial and advertisement mean almost the same thing.

 

* Search for articles where the keywords appear in a specific order by using quotation marks around them. Searching for "consumer behavior" or "genetically modified foods" only brings back articles where the words are in that exact order.

 

* Combine keywords with AND, OR, NOT.  

  • Using AND between keywords will narrow down your results to articles that contain both words.  Searching for Advertisements AND Children will only bring back articles that have both words.  
  • Using OR between keywords will expand your results.  Searching for Commercials OR Advertisements will give you more results because authors use different words to describe the same thing.  
  • Using NOT will exclude articles that contain a specific word.  If you're getting a lot of results that don't relate to your search, you can add NOT to the search and it will exclude any articles that mention that word.  Searching for football NOT NFL would bring back articles that mention football but do not include the word NFL. 

 

If you are having trouble deciding on the keywords to use in your search, come by the desk in the Library and we can help.

    

Style Manuals

We have print copies of the Seventh Edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (sometimes referred to as The APA Manual) in the MCOB Reference Section. The call number is BF 76.7 .P83 2020.