Market Research Pros And Cons
Data collected by the investigator himself/ herself for a specific purpose. Examples: Data collected by a student for his/her thesis or research project. (In movies) The hero Is directly told by the heroine that he Is her “Ideal man”. Secondary data: Data collected by someone else for some other purpose (but being utilized by the investigator for another purpose). Examples: Census data being used to analyze the impact of education on career choice and earning.
Advantages of Primary Market Research
- Targeted Issues are addressed
The organization asking for the research has the omelet control on the process and the research is streamlines as far as Its objectives and scope is concerned. Researching company can be asked to concentrate their efforts to find data regarding specific market rather than concentration on mass market.
- Data interpretation is better
The collected data can be examined and interpreted by the marketers depending on their needs rather than relying on the interpretation made by collectors of secondary data.
- Regency of Data
Usually secondary data Is not so recent and It may not be specific to the place or situation marketer Is targeting. The researcher can use the Irrelevant seeming Information for knowing trends or may be able to find some relation with the current scenario. Thus primary data becomes a more accurate tool since we can use data which is useful for us.
- Proprietary Issues
Collector of primary data is the owner of that information and he need not share it with other companies and competitors. This gives an edge over competitors replying on secondary data.
Disadvantages of Primary Market Research:
- High Cost. Collecting data using primary research Is a costly proposition as racketeer has to be Involved throughout and has to design everything.
- Time Consuming. Because of exhaustive nature of the exercise, the time required collected in much lesser time duration.
- Inaccurate Feed-backs. In case the research involves taking feedbacks from the targeted audience, there are high chances that feedback given is not correct. Feedbacks by their basic nature are usually biased or given Just for the sake of it.
- More number of resources are required. Leaving aside cost and time, other resources like human resources and materials too are needed in larger quantity to o surveys and data collection.
Advantages of Secondary Market Research
- Time and Cost effective:Usually time and cost required to collect secondary data is less than efforts required to collect primary data. Data is available freely or at far lesser cost through secondary sources.
- Extensiveness of data: Data collected by governments and other institutes is usually very extensive and covers a large spectrum of issues. An organization can filter that data and consider only parts which they are targeting.
Basis of Primary Research: Data collected from secondary resources gives an idea to organization about effectiveness of primary research. From secondary data one can form hypothesis and can evaluate the cost and efforts required to conduct own surveys. One can also note down issues, which are not covered from secondary research and, need to be addressed through primary research.
Disadvantages of Secondary Market Research
- Data Definitions: Secondary Researcher needs to understand various parameters and assumptions that primary research had taken while collected information. A term may have different meaning for different people, example a term ‘youth’ used is ambiguous and one needs to find what is the assumed age taken by primary researcher.
- Inaccuracy of Data: As we are not gathering our own information, first-hand, we are totally dependent on someone else’s efforts. Primary researcher may have been biased or may have used questionable methods to collect data; this can be pretty risky for secondary researchers to base their report on such data.
- Time Lag Issues: Information collected from books, historical surveys are usually not sync with the times and might have changed drastically.
