As a student of international business or as an international businessman, you may be interested in information which relates to a specific industry or a specific type of product. For example, you might wish to conduct an analysis of what might be involved in manufacturing or purchasing a product made in the United States, and exporting it to some foreign country. Conversely, you might be interested in manufacturing or purchasing a product in a foreign country and importing it into the United States. In either case, you will need to know as much as possible about the particular industry which you have targeted. The United States Government and several reputable U.S. publishing companies produce a variety of publications which do a generally adequate job of reporting on industries within this country.
Similar information concerning industries in other countries is less likely to be readily available.
Much information related to the U.S., though, is at least somewhat applicable to related industries in foreign countries. Efforts to interpret, interpolate, extrapolate, and make parallel comparisons can be beneficial. If time is not critical, it frequently is possible to obtain a wealth of industry-specific information from a particular country's embassy, its trade associations, or its governmental agencies. Students who are required to complete a project within the time constraints of a single semester, though, rarely will be able to pursue information outlets such as these. The decision to write away for information or to rely on sources which are immediately at hand is one which each researcher must make after weighing all of the appropriate factors, including time in particular.