Unit 1 Application Assignment: Business Research
By now, you should have selected a business to use for your application assignments. If you have not, then return to the “Select a Business for your Application Assignments” and choose the business you will use for the application assignments. There are choices for everyone, including Shawn and Sofia!
Now that you have made your decision as to which business to use, do some research on this business and prepare a short report, approximately 1.5 to 2 pages long, not including the cover page. You should use at least two resources for this report. One resource will be the corporate web site for the business.
IMPORTANT: Your instructor will show you where to find company information on the Internet. This information is usually at the very bottom of the company’s home page. Your instructor will also show you how to find the company’s stock information and price. This information will be covered in class or in a Zoom session.
Under the General Information section further below, you will find a ready-to-go template to use for your report, as well as some more notes about your report. We want you to start getting used to the research process and using APA Style.
Your report should cover the following points. These headings are already in the report template.
Introduction
Identify the business.
Explain why you selected this business.
History
Provide a brief history of this business.
Products
Identify and describe the main products (good and/or services).
Type of Ownership
Identify the type of ownership. Note: Publicly traded companies are going to be corporations.
Identify the Stock Exchange where this business is listed (e.g., NASDAQ, NYSE, AMEX)
How is the business listed on the stock exchange? (Example: Target is listed as TGT on the New York Stock Exchange.)
What is today’s price of this company’s stock? Is the price higher or lower than yesterday’s?
Social Responsibility
Just about every company has some sort of social responsibility or community service plan or initiative published on their company’s home page or on a linked page.
Briefly describe this company’s social responsibility plan.
Conclusion
Using the information found through your research, give your opinions about the following:
Do you or would you use this company’s products?
Would you like to work for this company?
Will this company be successful in the future?
General Information About Your Report
We have prepared a template for you to use for this report. Download that template here.
The template is an MS Word document and is already formatted for APA Style.
This template includes a cover page, headings you see in the outline above, and a references page.
Resources for this report:
The company’s corporate website is going to be a main source of information.
Do not use Wikipedia. Wikis are not valid sources for professional research.
You should not copy/paste any parts of your report from a website on the internet.
Provide a citation for any information that is not your own. For example, if you tell how many employees a company has, then include a citation for this data to let your reader know where you got this information.
Your own ideas:
The purpose of any research here at school and for your job at work is to find solid, reliable information and then to form your own ideas about your findings.
We want to see evidence of research, but we want to see what you have to say in this assignment as well.
You do NOT cite your own ideas.
APA Style:
The template gives you a good guide to follow for APA style.
There are tutorials in Canvas that show you how to use APA Style and how to cite information you find.
You can also get help in the Writing Assistance Center (WAC) with APA citation.
APA Style can be hard to master. By the end of this course, we want you to have a good basic understanding of how to prepare a professional research report.
