Primary and Secondary Research Data in Marketing/Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Secondary Data

Primary sources of marketing research data provide the “raw data” that that you use first to test the working hypothesis and then as evidence to support the researcher claim. Autobiographies, correspondence, descriptions of travel, diaries, literary works, interviews, personal narratives, painting and photographs. The sources of secondary data involve; Biographies, prior booklet. Secondary data is all the information collected for the purpose other than the completion of a market research project and it’s used to gain initial insight into the research problem. It is classified in terms of its source either internal or external.

Secondary data tends to be readily available and inexpensive to obtain. In addition, secondary data can be examined over a longer period of time.

The syndicate services provide information data from both household as well as institutions through wholesalers, retailers and industrial firms. The disadvantage is that the information is not exclusive.

Department of Economic Affairs Conducts economic survey and also generates information on income, consumption, expenditure, investment, savings and foreign trade.

 Internal Source of Secondary Data

Every department within an organization will have its own records that represent a potential source of valuable data. For instance, records of pasts advertising campaigns within the marketing department can be compared with copies of invoices held in the sales department in order to judge their effectiveness and get ideas for future campaigns. Past sales figures can also be used to spot trends and forecast future figures.



The increasing availability and use of loyalty cards has given retail outlets the chance to gather a wide range of valuable information on consumer buying habits, allowing them to target promotional campaigns more effectively.

Internal sources of data should always be considered as a first line of enquiry for any investigation because they are usually the quickest, cheapest and most convenient source of information available. Internal data will also be exclusive to the organization that generated it, so that rival firms will not have access to it.

However, internal data may be incomplete or out of data, and if a project is new, there may be no relevant data act all. In such cases, an organization may need to consider using external sources of secondary data.

External Sources of Secondary Data

There are several sources of existing data available from outside the organization that may be value.
These include:
Commercial market research organizations-including MINTEL and Others.
The Government – e.g. Monthly digest of statistics, Annual/Abstract of statistics, social trends. In addition, there are now a number of government website, such as www.statistics.gov.
Competitors – Company reports and website are easily accessible and contain a limited amount of information.
Trade publications – e.g. the Grocer.
The general media – to the archives of newspaper such as the Financial Times and the Guardian and journals such as the Economists are now accessible online, making them a useful starting point for research.

 Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Secondary Data

Secondary data sources should always be considered by any firm conducting research. No firm can afford to waste time and money conducting expensive surveys to gather data that already exists!

However, secondary data may have been collected some time ago and, therefore, be out-of-date. Because it has been collected for another purpose, it may be in the wrong format or incomplete. The advantages and disadvantages of using secondary data will vary from source to source.

Government data, for example, is usually cheap or even free to access. It is likely to be accurate and updated regularly.

However, it may be too general and, because it is unlikely to given an organization any competitive edge.

Some information on competitors may be easily available via company reports, or website, but these are unlikely to contain sensitive information or data that gives the firm a negative image.

Challenges of Data Publication

In comparison of traditional text publications, data publications present some new challenges. Whenever the researcher thinks of term paper we think of all kinds of publications in text form like journal articles, presentations, books, etc. For text publications, there are several widely accepted file formats such as plain text, HTML, Rich text Format, Microsoft word, open office documents, Adobe’s portable document format (PDF), Latex code, etc. All these formats are used by researchers worldwide in all disciplines.

For research data (syndicate):

The information provided is not exclusive. A number of research agencies provide customized service which suits the requirement of each individual organization.

Non-governmental publications may be biased
Reliability; Internal sources of published data are more reliable as they supply accurate data. Verification of data is not required.

Coverage: There is limited coverage in externally published research data as they relate to company only.

Information available from external sources cannot be used directly as it is more of modification as per the nature of research work required.

SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE

• Identify the major sources of internal and external research data. 

CONCLUSION

This unit in MKT 403 is designed to exposed students and researchers to sources of information (data) that might be required in any research work they wish to conduct. That is outlining some of the main internal and external sources of data available for commercial research purposes from dependence upon published sources of secondary data to also electronically stored data. You have also learnt that collection of external data is more difficult because the data have much greater variety and the sources are much more numerous.

This unit has also add to your knowledge about what research data is all about, the composition of primary and secondary data and the possible challenges in their acquisition and supply.