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DATABASE covers business and economics in Asia and the Pacific. It contains over 80,000 references from newspapers, magazines and other sources in North America and international. The Asia-Pasific Dun's Market Identifiers on Dialog is a directory listing of about 250,000 business establishments in 40 Asian and Pacific Rim countries. The Middle East News Network publishes daily news, analysis and comments from 19 countries in the Middle East produced by Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish and Persian press. You can read these news through Reuters (e.g., on NewsGrid/CompuServe), Down Jones News/Retrieval, and Information Access. The Jerusalem Institute for Western Defence provides a monthly newsletter with research of the Arab press. It has unedited quotes from around the Arab world. Write LISTSERV@jerusalem1.datasrv.co.il to subscribe (Command: sub arab-press Firstname Lastname). The International Reports financial newsletter may be read and searched on NewsNet, Information Access, and Mead Data Central. NewsNet also has Brazil Service, Mexico Service, Country Risk Guides and Weekly International Market Alert. Use CompuServe's Consumer Report to spot trends in the consumer markets for appliances, automobiles, electronics/cameras, home. EventLine (IQuest, CompuServe) monitors international conferences, exhibitions, and congresses. The Boomer Report concentrates on the habits of the "the baby-boom generation." Affaersdata in Sweden offers the Swedish-language service "Export-Nytt," which brings short news stories about export/import from all over the world. Information providers are the Swedish Export Council, the Norwegian Export Council, and the Suomen Ulkomaankauppaliitto in Finland. Orbit has an English language database of Japanese technology. It contains abstracts of articles, patents and standards from more than 500 Japanese magazines. Dow Jones News/Retrieval brings full-text stories from the Japan Economic Newswire. The Business Dateline contains news from more than 150 regional business publications in the United States and Canada. The ABI/Inform business database (UMI/Data Courier) contains abstracts and full-text articles from 800 business magazines and trade journals. The sources include the Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Business Korea, and the World Bank Research Observer. Market research reports from Frost & Sullivan are available through Data-Star. It produces over 250 market reports each year, in 20 industrial sectors. These reports cover results of face-to- face interviews with manufacturers, buyers and trade association executives, supplemented by a search and summary of secondary sources. Glasnost in the former Soviet Union produced a long list of new online information sources, including: The Soviet Press Digest (stories from over 100 newspapers), The BizEkon Reports (financial news from 150 business and financial magazines), SovLegisLine (law), BizEdon Directory (detailed information about over 2,500 companies, who want to do business with foreign companies), Who's Who in the Soviet Union and The Soviet Public Association Directory.

Some of these may have changed their names now. Contact Mead Data Central (Nexis/Lexis), Data-Star, FT Profile and Reuters for more information.

DJNR also offers full text from the Paris-based International Herald Tribune, publications like the Guardian and others from the United Kingdom, and from sources in the former Soviet Union (like Soviet Press Digest, BizEkon News, Moscow News, and others.) E-EUROPE is an electronic communications network for doing business in Eastern Europe countries, including CIS. Its purpose is to help these countries in their transition to market economies. It links business persons in Western Europe-Asia-North America with those in Eastern Europe. Subscription is free and for anyone. To subscribe to E-EUROPE, send email LISTSERV@PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU (or a LISTSERV closer to you) with the body the message containing this line SUB E-EUROPE YourFirstName YourLastName

E-EUROPE also offers International Marketing Insights (IMI) for several countries in this region, including Russia, Hungary, Czech, Germany, Estonia, Poland, Bulgaria, and Lithuania. The IMI reports important developments that have implications for traders and investors. Typically brief and to-the-point, they are prepared by American Embassies and Consulates. The reports cover a wide range of subjects, such as new laws, policies and procedures, new trade regulations, changing dynamics in the marketplace, recent statements by influential parties and emerging trade opportunities.

For a list of E-EUROPE IMI offerings, send the following commands to LISTSERV@PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU: GET E-EUROPE IMI

IMI update notices are not posted to E-EUROPE, but you can subscribe to updates to these files. The English-language newsletter "St. Petersburg Business News" is published in Russia by the Committee for foreign economic affairs of LECC. For information and subscription, send email to aag@cfea.ecc.spb.su .

The Financial Izvestia weekly, the joint publication of London Financial Times and Moscow-based Izvestia, is available by email. The complete feed includes the full text of all articles published in the Russian language newspaper, and financial and statistical tables on the commodities and financial markets. Write Legpromsyrie at root@sollo.soleg.msk.su for information. Several Russian newspapers, including Commersant Daily, Nega, and press services like Postfactum and Interfax, have digests or complete editions available for Relcom network subscribers, usually for a nominal fee.

Interested in the European Common Market?

Pergamon Financial Data Services, NewsNet, and others, offer Dun & Bradstreet European Marketing Online. It contains company profiles of around two million European companies.

Pergamon's ICC U.K. Company Databases contains data on over 140,000 British companies with up to ten years' financial history, addresses, key people, mother firms/subsidiaries, stock quotes. Its Comptex News Service brings daily business news from the European arena. The UK Company Library on CompuServe has financial information about more than 1.2 million British companies from sources like Extel Cards, ICC British Co. Directory and Kompass UK. Data-Star offers Tenders Electronic Daily, a database of European Community contract offers. Investext offers a series of bulletins authored by Europe Information Service (EIS): European Report (biweekly), Tech Report (Monthly), Transport Europe (monthly), Europe Environment (bimonthly), European Energy (bimonthly), European Social Policy (monthly), and Multinational Service (monthly). Investext is available through Data-Star, Lexis/Nexis, Dow Jones News/Retrieval, Dialog, NewsNet, and others. The German Company Library (on CompuServe) offers information about some 48,000 German companies from databases like Credit Reform and Hoppenstedt's Directory of German Companies. Its European Company Library contains information about over two million companies in the area. Nexis (Mead Data Central International) brings news and background information about companies and the different countries in Europe. Their Worldwide Companies database contains company profiles, balance sheets, income statements, and other financial data on the largest companies in 40 countries. Nexis also has Hoppenstedt German Trade Associations directory, four more newsletters from the Europe Information Service: Europe Energy, Europe Environment, Transport Europe and European Insight, a weekly brief on European Community-related happenings, and Notisur, a biweekly news and analysis report on South American and Caribbean political affairs. LEXIS (also Mead) has databases with information about English and French law, and other law material from Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Scotland and North America. Their Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory has information on over 700,000 lawyers and law firms worldwide. The directory can be used for referrals, selection of associate counsel, and evaluation of competitive counsel. Check out KOMPASS EUROPE when planning exports to the EEC. Its database contains details about companies in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, United Kingdom, Holland, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden and Norway. (On Dialog) ILINK has the EEC-I conference (Discussion about the European Common Marked). Profile offers full-text searches (and a clipping service) in stories from Financial Times. The database is being updated daily at 00:01. Those exporting to the EEC need to master German, French, Italian, and Spanish besides having a common knowledge of English. Conversation is the easy part. The problem is writing, and especially when the task is to translate technical expressions to the languages used within the Common Market. For help, check out the Eurodicautom online dictionary through ECHO (and others.) Start by selecting a source language (like English), and up to seven languages for simultaneous translation. The translation is word-for-word, but may be put in the correct context if required. ECHO also offers the European Commission's CORDIS database (Community Research and Development Information Service) containing information about research results within scientific and technical fields. Keywords: Race, Esprit, Delta, Aim, Fast, Brite, Comett, Climat, Eclair and Tedis. CONCISE (COsine Network's Central Information Service for Europe) is a pan-European information service to the COSINE scientific and industrial research community. COSINE (Cooperation for Open Systems Interconnection Networking in Europe) is part of the European Common Market's Eureka project. CONCISE brings information about the COSINE project, networks, conferences, networking products, special interest groups, projects databases, directories, email services and other networked services in Europe. It is intended for researchers in all fields, from astronomers through linguists and market researchers to zoologists. CONCISE is accessible by email through the Internet, by FTP, and interactively (telnet) over the European academic and research networks, over public data networks and over telephone links. (See ECHO in appendix 1 for more information.) The mailing list EC@INDYCMS.BITNET is dedicated to discussion of the European Community, and is open to all interested persons. Subscribe by email to a LISTSERV close to where you live, or to LISTSERV@INDYCMS.BITNET.

Scandinavia

Most countries have several local language news services. In Norway, Statens Datasentral lets you search stories from the NTB news agency. Aftenposten, a major newspaper, offers full-text stories from their A-TEKST database, from Dagens Naeringsliv (DNX), and the Kapital magazine.

Before meeting with people from Norsk Hydro, go online to get recent news about these companies. It will only take a couple of minutes. What you find may be important for the success of your meeting. If you know the names of your most important competitors, use their names as keywords for information about recent contracts, joint venture agreements, products (and their features), and other important information. KOMPASS ONLINE offers information about over 180,000 companies and 34,000 products in Scandinavia, Finland, Germany, Switzerland, and Great Britain. The information is presented in the local language of the different countries. KOMPASS is used by easy menus. You can search by * company name * product or service (optionally using an industry classification code for companies or products) * number of employees, type of business, postal number, telephone area code, export area, year of incorporation, bank affiliation.

The database is available through Affaersdata (Sweden). New users pay a one time fee of around US$85. Searching costs around US$3.00 per minute.

The TYR database on the Finnish service VIEXPO (tel.: +358 67 235100) offers information about 2,500 companies in the Vaasa and Oulu regions with addresses, phone numbers, contact persons, main products, revenues, and SIC industry classification codes. We can go on like this. The list of available services is long in many countries.

How to monitor your competitors

Sales managers need to know what competitors are doing. Lacking this knowledge, it is risky to maneuver in the market. Start by making a strategy for online market intelligence. Here are some practical hints:

(1) Select online services that offer clipping of stories and

information based on your search words or phrases. Examples: NewsFlash on NewsNet, //TRACK on Dow Jones News/Retrieval, The Executive News Service on CompuServe. Use these services for automatic monitoring of stock quotes and business news.

(2) Read what investment analysts and advisors write about your

competitors. Most markets are well covered by databases and other sources of information.

(3) Read what competitors write about themselves. Their press

releases are available from online databases in