About Product Codes and Product Names

Every PROMT and Trade & Industry record is assigned at least one Product Code with a corresponding Product Name (aka Predicasts Product Code & Name) by a Gale Group editorial staff member. Product Codes are chosen from a list of standard terms and are intended to capture the main focus of an article. Product Codes/Names represent specific industries, products, services, and other business-related topics. The Product Codes/Names can be used to retrieve a precise set of articles discussing the subject of interest to you.

Product Codes are arranged in a hierarchical structure which enables you to be as specific or as general as you need to be. For example, a section of the Electrical & Electronic Equipment hierarchy is arranged as follows: 

36   Electrical and Electronic Equipment
  365   Consumer Electronics
     3651   Audio & TV Equipment
        36511   Radios
           365111  Household Radios
	      3651113   Clock Radios

Note: Product Codes do not automatically cascade. Use the truncation character, asterisk (*) to capture all codes in a subject group. For example, if you want to capture all records indexed with product codes at the five, six and seven digit level for the example above, enter 3651*. Product codes can be up to seven digits long. If you only want to retrieve articles at a specific level in the hierarchy, zero fill your entry (e.g. 3651000).

To use the Product Code and Name field simply enter a code or a word or phrase of interest to you. If you receive an error message saying, "There were no matching citations for this search," the code or product name you entered did not match a valid entry. You have the following options:

  • Enter the word or phrase in the Free Text field.
  • Use truncation characters to make your search less restrictive: An asterisk (*) matches any number of characters, ? (question mark) matches any single character, and ! (exclamation point) matches one or no characters. An asterisk (*) at the beginning of a word or code will not process.

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