A product hierarchy database organizes company market performance and stock investment information by the products and services produced and offered by each competitor. The companies that produce each product/service are relationally linked to each of their products/services through records. An investment information service includes the product/service hierarchy database and makes it accessible to investor and analyst subscribers through a query system across the Internet. Data entry personnel continually load qualitative and quantitative information about companies and their products/services through a product hierarchy generator connected to the product/service hierarchy database. Subscribers can punch-through to query individual data items, and they can find out what relationships exist between all the important aspects of the companies and the products/services being tracked. The invention also provides for the creation of an index and corresponding index value for every product or service type in the database, which consists of a composite of all companies in a product or service area and whose index value can be measured and compared against any other product or service type index value.
展开▼
