The Berkeley College Library has many databases to locate information on a company. The Business Insights database is a great source for a company SWOT report; the SWOT report succinctly details a company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and strengths.
Every company has a Mission Statement that states in i concise terms, its purpose(s) for being. These reports can usually be found on a company's Investor Relations web site and at the very beginning of an Annual Report.
Vertical growth means growing within your area of expertise. It's all about scaling up what you currently offer, adding complementary products or features, and expanding from a niche product to something more all-encompassing within that industry.
For example, an auto manufacturer might specialize in luxury sedans. They make excellent cars, and that's it. Eventually, they reach a peak in business; they can't sell more cars yearly because they've saturated their market. To keep growing as an auto-maker, they need to expand its offerings.
Rather than expanding and growing vertically within one niche, horizontal growth requires you to take your existing product or service and expand it to other markets.
A few examples of horizontal integration might include:
source: https://www.contentpowered.com/blog/difference-vertical-horizontal-growth/#what_is_vertical_growth
ProQuest’s Business Collection.
Journals, magazines, news, and reports in areas of business, international business, management, marketing, human resources, human relations, social responsibility, business ethics, and company or industry research. Includes company reports and SWOT analysis.
Company and industry profiles, including a SWOT analysis for many public companies.
Popular companies: Amazon, Walmart, Starbucks, Costco, Apple.
This collection includes Hoover’s Company Profiles for thousands of public and non-public companies.
Extensive news, business, and legal sources. Includes federal and state cases and statutes, and millions of company profiles, reports and SWOT analyses.
Find statistics, reports, outlooks, company data, consumer survey results, and industry studies from over 22500 sources on over 60000 topics.
Search and access every full-text resource available through ProQuest’s entire collection of 175 different databases,
The Annual Report contains valuable information about a company. The Annual Reports tend to be very lengthy and I do not recommend reading the entire report; however, using the Ctrl F function in the PDF version allows for searching an annual report by keyword. In the example below, I searched in the Annual Report for Microsoft for the keyword "Culture" and I was able to easily navigate to the 17 instances where the word was used.
Industry reports are comprehensive accounts of a particular industry. They usually include information about emerging industry trends, general financial statistics (e.g. operating costs, revenue, consumer spending), details about major companies, market share, and a summary of supply and demand chains.
A lot of reports that you find in a Google search on an industry are expensive and the credibility of those reports is hard to determine. Good news! You can access credible industry reports through the library's subscription databases.
The IBIS and Plunkett databases are the best source for information on the Fashion Industry. Plunkett's Apparel, Textiles & Fashions Industry report provides excellent forecasts for the domestic and global fashion market. The IBIS database is particularly helpful in finding information on a classification such as footwear, women's clothing, men's clothing or infantwear.