PROFESSOR: There are two different types of market research when it comes to information origin. There is primary research and secondary research. Let's start with the primary research definition. Primary research, sometimes also referred to as field research, consists of you going out there, literally or figuratively, to generate new information directly from sources. When it comes to market research for marketing or product development purposes, these sources could include, for example, potential target customers or other people relevant to the purchase decision process. So, primary research data is generated intentionally for the purpose at hand. The data wasn't available before you gathered it, and that's primary research's defining characteristic. Examples of primary market research methods could be interviews, surveys, focus groups, advisory boards, mock negotiations, et cetera. Although if you're conducting primary market research by yourself, probably the most realistic tools to use are interviews and surveys given their simplicity to put together and lower costs, of course. But evidently, if you're going to do market research, you can use information that already exists. When our research is based on information that already exists, we call it secondary research, usually also referred to as desk research. What we do in this case of secondary market research or desk research is to look around, usually on the internet, for information that's already available and that we can use to gain a better understanding of our market. Usually, we won't have to talk to anyone, so it really can be done from the comfort of our desk. All the information already exists out there, and we're just gathering and analyzing it. We're not generating new data. Note that secondary research sources can usually be found both internally and externally in regard to the business. Examples of secondary-research external information sources could be websites, such as general information sites, and competitor sites, where you can see what products and services competitors offer, and the marketing messages they are using to communicate their value. If competitors have customer feedback published on their sites, you can find hints of what people value most regarding their products and services, how they wish they were different, et cetera. Another great source of information is review sites or online stores that publish customer reviews. I mean, just think of the amount of feedback that you can get about a competitive product by reading its Amazon reviews. In line with these, competitors' social media pages can also be valuable since people may be leaving feedback there, as can be forums and social media platforms where potential customers may be discussing products or services that are similar to your own existing or envisioned ones and are saying what they like and don't like about them. But let's not forget about more traditional sources of secondary data, such as good old industry reports, company reports, trade associations' data, statistics, and data published by public entities. I mean, there are a lot of great sources of information out there that we can use before we even think about generating our own data through primary research. And then let's not forget about internal secondary data, such as your own analytics and information that can be collected from interactions with clients, such as frequently asked questions, suggestions, complaints, feedback on existing products, feedback regarding products that they think are missing from our range, et cetera. This is all valuable secondary data, too. But what makes this internal data secondary and not primary since we're generating it ourselves? Well, as mentioned before, the defining characteristic to distinguish between the two types of research is whether the data already existed or had to be generated intentionally to fulfill our research purposes. And what are primary and secondary research advantages and disadvantages? Well, most of the primary research advantages and disadvantages are probably easy to spot, right? On the primary research advantages side, the first one is that we are working with data that was specifically collected to fit our purpose, so it answers our specific question. We are the ones deciding what to ask, to whom, and how, within the constraints that available time and budget impose, of course. On top of that, the data is recent. While secondary data may not have been updated in a long time, primary data is up to date at the time at which we conduct our research. But primary research disadvantages are unfortunately a bit of a pain. To begin, it's expensive. Even if you're doing it by yourself and not paying participants for their time, you are still investing your own time into it, and it may not be that little. Then, preparation can be complex. You need to put together questions, and stimulus materials, identify participants, and then convince them to participate because unless your family and friends are target customers, interviewing them is useless. You need to find the right people to talk to. And once you get your data, you need to analyze the answers you got. Sometimes this is really easy, but sometimes it's anything but. Finally, to top it off, the data will be incomplete. You see when we do primary research, we work with samples. We can't possibly interview or survey every potential person potentially involved with our product purchasing decision, so we work with population samples. We try to make our samples representative, of course, but we're always exposed to some error, and we have to balance a cost-versus-uncertainty decision as costs can ramp up very quickly as we increase our sample robustness. For more on this, check out the video about qualitative versus quantitative research. That's another decision we have to make when it comes to primary research. But let's now take a look at secondary research's advantages and disadvantages. On the secondary market research advantages side, the major one is that it's a lot easier to conduct than primary research and a lot cheaper. It's also good to create a general knowledge base and generate hypotheses that we can afterward test in primary research. However, secondary research disadvantages can't be overlooked. To begin, data is often not only outdated but also incomplete. Keep in mind that people are publishing what they want to publish to serve their own purposes or someone else's. They're not publishing anything for the sake of your market research exercise. So although we can get a glimpse at one side of an issue by looking at data that we can find already available, we cannot see all aspects that would be relevant for us to make decisions regarding our businesses. And that leads us to secondary research's major and potentially very dangerous disadvantage. And it is that sometimes the results are inconclusive and even misleading. You see, after we see all the data we were able to gather about our markets, other products and services in it, and what customers are saying about those products, we may believe that we have so much information that we have figured out what people would want our product or service to be like. After all, we know so much. However, unless we confirm our understanding by getting proper feedback, what we have are hypotheses. That's it, hypotheses. They may be right. They may be wrong. And until we test them, they are nothing but hypotheses that we should confirm before acting on them, especially if acting entails a big investment. That said, when would it make sense to use each type of research in our market research efforts? Well, personally, I see them as sequential steps. Secondary market research is the first step that we use to build the basis of our knowledge about the market, identify knowledge gaps, and generate hypotheses to later test in primary research. Then primary research can be used to fill in the knowledge gaps we identified, confirm our understanding regarding what we have learned through secondary research, and confirm or disprove the hypothesis we generated based on our preliminary understanding developed using the secondary data. So when I talk about market research broadly in my videos, I'm usually referring to primary research—that is, talking to potential customers and other purchasing-process stakeholders to get their insights about the market and their opinions regarding an envisioned product. I consider secondary market research so fundamental that I usually just consider it to be a part of the preparation for primary research. It's non-negotiable. I just assume it's done in every case, even if you don't do primary research, which I wouldn't really recommend. Without good preparation in terms of desk research, the information we can get from surveys or direct conversations with people, even if helpful, probably won't be anywhere near as good as it could have been if we had prepared. And if we're going to put ourselves through the pain of primary research, we may as well prepare and do it right. And that's it for today. Next time, I'll dig a little bit deeper into primary research and take a look at qualitative versus quantitative market research. See you in the next one. Bye.