Fee based companies, such as Hoovers, LexisNexis, and the credit reporting companies are in the business of collecting and compiling information on businesses and individuals. Their revenue is earned through the sale of the information they collect. For the most part, they make no attempt to assess the specific validity of the information they sell. Rather, they tend to rely on the fact that on average, their information is quite reliable. The overall trend for fee based information is that reliability tends to increase with price. Fee based companies can be a useful source of information on competitors that might not be otherwise available. For example, credit reports are available for competing firms and credit reports can yield a good deal of information about a firm’s financial condition.
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