Which of the following is an advantage of using secondary research?

What is secondary research?

Secondary research is a type of market research where you compile and analyze information that is already available. You can obtain this information through googling, online databases, and libraries. The data can be from articles, studies, and even past surveys. Secondary research is an essential tool in market research as it can assist in better understanding your industry, competitors, and trends in the marketplace. 

Suppose you are thinking about conducting primary research (research that is not already out there). It can help guide your initiative by not duplicating any efforts (e.g. research information currently out there).

Here are the pros and cons of secondary research. 

The Pros of Secondary Research 

Cost-Effective

Secondary research is often less expensive than primary research. Since the data is out there already, the most considerable expense is usually the workforce to find and interpret the data.  

Wide Range of Information

In this online world, it is pretty easy to gather an extensive amount of information. Secondary research can help find, among other things: 

• The current and projected market. Economic projections, industry reports, and additional information on sales and market performance.
• Competition in your brand’s field. This can include competitors’ brand positioning, sales numbers, website performance, pricing, etc. Primary research is essential for understanding the perceptions of competitors. Still, secondary research can preface that knowledge by giving a detailed perspective of what the competitor’s strategy is in the first place.
• Consumer perspective and perceptions of your product. Although nothing beats primary research when it comes to consumer perceptions, by looking for already available opinions out there, secondary does a great job in informing you prior to conducting primary, and making sure you don’t double up.
• Trends and opportunities in the market. All three of the above combine together to inform your perspective when it comes to the possibilities for your product to succeed. The amalgamation of consumer and economic perspective is a powerful way to understand where your brand/product fits

Prevents Duplicate Information If Planning Additional Research

Using secondary research helps access the best market research strategies to use. Secondary research can be conducted on its own. It is also an ideal methodology to utilize before other phases, as it informs what the best primary research is necessary. This prevents duplicating efforts with research that is already public. 

The Cons of Secondary Research

Because secondary research deals with already available information, that means the research is readily available, including your brand’s potential competitors. It is not data that is uniquely accessible by one person or company. Along those lines, secondary research can not be specialized to a specific individual’s or business’s needs the same way primary research can. You will not be able to get the same distinct knowledge catered to your brand.   

Conclusion

Secondary research is a powerful but sometimes limited market research tool. It’s vital to conduct secondary research before the primary stage to understand what you may be missing, what you already know, and what to look for. Secondary is an always-available tool that should be utilized, but also understood for its limitations.

Read some of our blogs from this series here:

1. August 10th, 2020: The Pros and Cons of Segmentation Research
2. June 17th, 2020: The Pros and Cons of Online Focus Groups
3. February 6th, 2020: The Pros and Cons of In-Depth Interviews
4. July 13th, 2020: The Pros and Cons of Online Survey Research
5. June 28th, 2020: The Pros and Cons of Message Testing

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Secondary research or desk research is a research method that involves using already existing data. Existing data is summarized and collated to increase the overall effectiveness of research.

Secondary research includes research material published in research reports and similar documents. These documents can be made available by public libraries, websites, data obtained from already filled in surveys etc. Some government and non-government agencies also store data, that can be used for research purposes and can be retrieved from them.

Secondary research is much more cost-effective than primary research, as it makes use of already existing data, unlike primary research where data is collected first hand by organizations or businesses or they can employ a third party to collect data on their behalf.

Learn More: Primary Research- Examples, Methods and Purpose

Secondary Research Methods with Examples

Secondary research is cost effective and that’s one of the reasons that makes it a popular choice among a lot of businesses and organizations. Not every organization is able to pay huge sum of money to conduct research and gather data. So, rightly secondary research is also termed as “desk research”, as data can be retrieved from sitting behind a desk.

Following are popularly used secondary research methods and examples:

1. Data available on the internet: One of the most popular ways of collecting secondary data is using the internet. Data is readily available on the internet and can be downloaded at the click of a button.

This data is practically free of cost or one may have to pay a negligible amount to download the already existing data. Websites have a lot of information that businesses or organizations can use to suit their research needs. However, organizations need to consider only authentic and trusted website to collect information.

2. Government and nongovernment agencies: Data for secondary research can also be collected from some government and non-government agencies. For example, US Government Printing Office, US Census Bureau, and Small Business Development Centers have valuable and relevant data that businesses or organizations can use.

There is a certain cost applicable to download or use data available with these agencies. Data obtained from these agencies are authentic and trustworthy.

3. Public libraries: Public libraries are another good source to search for data for this research. Public libraries have copies of important research that were conducted earlier. They are a storehouse of important information and documents from which information can be extracted.

The services provided in these public libraries vary from one library to another. More often, libraries have a huge collection of government publications with market statistics, large collection of business directories and newsletters.

4. Educational Institutions: Importance of collecting data from educational institutions for secondary research is often overlooked. However, more research is conducted in colleges and universities than any other business sector.

The data that is collected by universities is mainly for primary research. However, businesses or organizations can approach educational institutions and request for data from them.

5. Commercial information sources: Local newspapers, journals, magazines, radio and TV stations are a great source to obtain data for secondary research. These commercial information sources have first-hand information on economic developments, political agenda, market research, demographic segmentation and similar subjects.

Businesses or organizations can request to obtain data that is most relevant to their study. Businesses not only have the opportunity to identify their prospective clients but can also know about the avenues to promote their products or services through these sources as they have a wider reach.

Key Differences between Primary Research and Secondary Research

How to conduct Secondary Research?

Here are the steps involved in conducting secondary research:

1. Identify the topic of research: Before beginning secondary research, identify the topic that needs research. Once that’s done, list down the research attributes and its purpose.

2. Identify research sources: Next, narrow down on the information sources that will provide most relevant data and information applicable to your research.

3. Collect existing data: Once the data collection sources are narrowed down, check for any previous data that is available which is closely related to the topic. Data related to research can be obtained from various sources like newspapers, public libraries, government and non-government agencies etc.

4. Combine and compare: Once data is collected, combine and compare the data for any duplication and assemble data into a usable format. Make sure to collect data from authentic sources. Incorrect data can hamper research severely.

4. Analyze data: Analyze data that is collected and identify if all questions are answered. If not, repeat the process if there is a need to dwell further into actionable insights.

Advantages of Secondary Research

1. Most information in this research is readily available. There are many sources from which relevant data can be collected and used, unlike primary research, where data needs to collect from scratch.

2. This is a less expensive and less time-consuming process as data required is easily available and doesn’t cost much if extracted from authentic sources. A minimum expenditure is associated to obtain data.

3. The data that is collected through secondary research, gives organizations or businesses an idea about the effectiveness of primary research. Hence, organizations or businesses can form a hypothesis and evaluate cost of conducting primary research.

4. Secondary research is quicker to conduct because of availability of data. It can be completed within a few weeks depending on the objective of businesses or scale of data needed.

Disadvantages of Secondary Research

1. Although data is readily available, credibility evaluation must be performed to understand the authenticity of the information available.

2. Not all secondary data resources offer the latest reports and statistics. Even when the data is accurate, it may not be updated enough to accommodate recent timelines.

3. Secondary research derives its conclusion from collective primary research data. The success of your research will depend, to a greater extent, on the quality of research already conducted by primary research.

Learn More: The complete guide on market research surveys

What are the advantages of using secondary research?

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Which of the following is an advantage of secondary data as compared to primary data?