Primary and Secondary Marketing Research

Primary and Secondary Marketing Research
The five-step scientific marketing research process includes defining the problem, analyzing the situation, getting problem-specific data, interpreting the data, and finally solving the problem (Perreault, 1999).

The first step is to define the problem. Once the problem is identified and defined, the next step is to analyze the situation. Part of this situation analysis involves gathering data. There are two kinds of marketing research data, primary and secondary. The situation analysis involves gathering secondary data, which is data that has already been gathered and published by a third party. Much of this data could be available internally within the data stores of the business, or it is available from outside sources such as government agencies, libraries, trade associations, or private research companies. One of the first places one should try and find secondary data from is over the Internet. Using the Internet is probably one o...