Different types of primary and secondary market research

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        Unit 10 P1

Different types of primary and secondary research

Market research is an essential part of any business plan, whether it is a fledgling business or a multinational organization. Knowing that there is a sustainable market for your product and understanding of what your audience expects from you is vital from a successful business launch.  

  • Primary research is when the creation of your own research, whether it is a question you ask to your friends and family or a survey put together alongside, agency and managed to a wide panel. Primary research will instantly make you feel more in control of your project. You choose your questions and select your panel through qualitative research, allowing you detailed responses from an individual person. You decide how, when and where your research will be managerial. You can ensure that your research is focused: the number of participants and their backgrounds, the number of nature of the questions, the number of time that your survey is available.

Types of primary research:  

Observation: watching how consumers behave provides many insights, but can leave questions unanswered. Observation works well in retail markets; sit outside a shop and watch how many people walk by, look at a window display etc.  

Experimentation: Marketers often undertake experiments to measure how the use of one marketing variable affects another. The use of experiments has claims for many marketing decision areas including product testing, advertising design, setting price points and creating packaging. For example, a market researcher for a retail chain may want to study the effect on sales if a product display is moved to different locations in a store.  

Face to face surveys: personal interviews conducted face to face. A costly but good way to get detailed insights from an individual.

Postal surveys: sent to the address of potential customers who complete the form and send back in a pre-paid envelope. Relatively cheap, a postal survey can cover a wide geographical area and avoids the potential.

Email interview: Email interviews are less personal than face-to-face or phone interviews, but highly suitable for most individuals. You may not get as much information from someone in an email interview because you are not able to ask follow-up questions or play off the interviewee’s responses. However, email interviews are useful because they are already in a digital format.  

Telephone interviews: The telephone interview allows quicker feedback than a postal survey.  However, potential customers are often wary of being called and may be unwilling to give anything other than short answers.

Test marketing: This involves selling a new product in a small section of the market in order to assess customer reaction.  For example, a start-up could start by selling to a limited local area in order to iron-out product issues.  Software firms often test-market their products by offering “beta” versions for testing by a small group of potential customers. Test marketing can be a good predictor of how a new product or service will be received by the larger market.  

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E-marketing research: Ecommerce Market Research on the Internet includes a wide variety of information gathered for e-business planning and prospecting. Free ecommerce research found online is not always accurate but can be useful to track opinions, profiles and customer behavior.  

Focus groups: Groups of potential customers are brought together to discuss their feelings about a product or market. Focus groups are a good way of getting detailed information about customer tastes and preferences.

Panels: A marketing research panel is a reliable source of primary marketing research information. For B2B marketing research, or consumer marketing research, ...

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