5.1 Information sources and data types

Internal (financial reports, market analysis):

Financial information: information related to the performance and profit and loss of the company.

Personnel information: information held by the company on their employees.

Marketing information: this is used by the marketing team to identify what products or services offered are most successful.

Purchasing information: collected by the purchasing department who are involved with buying the products.

Sales information: this needs to be monitored based on the product or service offered by the company.

Manufacturing information: information about the cost of manufacturing goods within the company.

External- Government, trade groupings, commercially provided information, database and research.

Government: Comes from a reliable source as this is the governing body that they operate within.

Trade groupings: This is a group of businesses that operate within the same sector and not within the same location.

Comercially provided: Companies use this information to make the correct business decisions.

Database and research: Companies can research information that might help them increase the sales and level of interest in their business.

Primary research: Involves the collection of data that does not already exist.

Benefits:

• Can be tailored to company needs
• Company can control flow of information
• Can be adpated to spot gaps in market

Drawbacks:

• Could be very expensive
• Takes a long time and can be out of date

Secondary research: Involves the summary or collection of existing research rather than primary research.

Qualitative methods: Ways of collecting data which describe purpose and meaning.

Quantitative methods: Data which is based on numerical data.