4.2 Gathering Marketing Data

The type of data gathered by market researchers varies depending on their business needs, budget, skills, and available resources. Sometimes researchers need to gather their own data (primary data) when a company wishes to answer a question for which there is no easily-obtainable answer already sitting in a public dataset or website. This can be done through surveys, focus groups, one-on-one interviews, experiments, or direct observation. Collecting information specifically for the study can be expensive but the data is proprietary and directly applicable to business needs.

Secondary data, on the other hand, already exists somewhere else.  Industry analyst reports, census data, administrative data such as motor vehicle registrations, published annual reports from major companies, and research papers that have been placed in the public domain are all examples of secondary data.

Compared to primary data, secondary data is often readily-available and relatively inexpensive. Due to its routine nature, administrative data also has a large sample size, making it possible to detect changes over time. Unfortunately, secondary data may not contain specific information the researcher requires. The information may also be dated. When using survey data provided by a third party, it is important to ‘read the fine print’ to determine the sampling method used for the survey because these impact the estimates and standard errors.