Primary & Secondary Research

Market Research: studying a market to gather data, particularly on factors influencing demand for the product.

Setting up a business because you have a hunch that it might be profitable is foolish and unnecessarily risky. 

• How many people will have the same opinion as you?
• What price would consumers be willing to buy it at that meets your requirements? 

In order to gather the most reliable possible information in order to inform your decision making and business planning. This information gathering process is called market research.

Primary Research: conducting new research into demand for a product.

If you collect your own data, or commission others to do the job for you, this is primary market resrarch.

Quantitative Research: Numerical research e.g. on potential customers or sales of rivals

Qualitative Research: Research into preferences and attitudes, often at some depth

Quantitative research (normally numerical) tends to generate more reliable results than qualitative research, which deals with attitudes, preferences and feelings.

Secondary Research: taking information from data already collected by others.

Much of the necessary information can be looked up. Specialist business compile detailed market information, which they sell to their customers. Getting access to information that others have already gatjered is called secondary market resrarch. 

Secondary research can be

• substantially quicker 
• easier than collecting your own data. 
• pretty reliable, however errors can occur.