1. PRIMARY DATA vs SECONDARY DATA RESEARCH Lesson 23 June 2016

2. Primary Source
A primary source is a document created at the time of your research subject, about your research subject. These documents are directly connected with the events or people being researched.

3. Primary Source Data and Original Research Diaries and Journals
Speeches and Interviews
Letters and Memos
Autobiographies and Memoirs
Books or articles written at the time of the event
Government Documents
Census Statistics
Organizational Records
Documentaries
Photographs
Art (from the time period)
Maps (from the time period)
Internet communications (including listservs and s)

4. Secondary Source
A secondary source is a document created at a later time than the event being researched, by someone who did not experience the said event. These documents have no direct connection with the events or people being researched.

5. Secondary Source Encyclopedias Chronologies Biographies
Monographs (a specialized book or article)
Most journal articles (unless written at the time of the event)
Most published books (unless written at the time of the event)
Abstracts of articles
Paraphrased quotations
Dictionaries
Textbooks

6. Secondary Source
What would be a source for the following data? Use Google to answer this.
Population, average income, and employment rates
Annual sales of the top ten fast-food companies
Divorce trends
The Census Web page ( has a link to state and county quick facts.
The R. L. Polk Company ( publishes information on the automobile field, such as new car purchase rates and average car value information.

7. Research Activity
Demand for Gas Guzzlers

8. Secondary Data Research

9. Does It Matter?
Secondary research shows that services and value are most important to consumers.

10. Secondary Data Research (cont’d)
Data conversion
The process of changing the original form of the data to a format suitable to achieve the research objective
Also called data transformation
Cross-checks
The comparison of data from one source with data from another source to determine the similarity of independent projects.

11. Typical Objectives for Secondary-Data Research Designs
Fact Finding
Identification of consumer behavior for a product category
Trend Analysis
Market tracking—the observation and analysis of trends in industry volume and brand share over time.
Environmental Scanning
Information gathering and fact-finding that is designed to detect indications of environmental changes in their initial stages of development.

12. Typical Objectives for Secondary-Data Research Designs
Model Building
Estimating market potential for geographic area
Forecasting sales
Analysis of trade areas and sites

13. Is the secondary data suitable?

14. Secondary Data for Calculating an Index of Retail Saturation

15. Data Mining Data Mining Neural Network
The use of powerful computers to dig through volumes of data to discover patterns about an organization’s customers and products; applies to many different forms of analysis.
Neural Network
A form of artificial intelligence in which a computer is programmed to mimic the way that human brains process information.

16. Mining Data from Blogs
Data-mining software, like Buzz Report, search millions of blogs looking for messages related to particular products and trends.

17. Data Mining (cont’d) Market-Basket Analysis Customer Discovery
A form of data mining that analyzes anonymous point-of-sale transaction databases to identify coinciding purchases or relationships between products purchased and other retail shopping information.
Customer Discovery
Involves mining data to look for patterns identifying who is likely to be a valuable customer.

18. Database Marketing and Customer Relationship Management
The use of customer relationship management (CRM) databases to promote one-to-one relationships with customers and create precisely targeted promotions.
The practice of maintaining a customer database of:
Names and addresses
Past purchases
Responses to past efforts
Data from numerous other outside sources

19. Sources of Internal Secondary Data
Internal and Proprietary Data
Accounting information
Sales information and backorders
Customer complaints, service records, warranty card returns, and other records.
Intranets

20. External Secondary Data Sources
External Data
Generated or recorded by an entity other than the researcher’s organization.
Information as a product and its distribution
Libraries
Internet
Vendors
Producers
Books and periodicals
Government
Media
Trade associations
Commercial sources

21. Information as a Product and its Distribution Channels

22. Commercial Sources Market-share data Demographic and census updates
Consumer attitude and public opinion research
Consumption and purchase behavior data
Advertising research

23. Secondary Data Research
Data gathered and recorded by someone else prior to and for a purpose other than the current project.
Advantages
Available
Faster and less expensive than acquiring primary data
Requires no access to subjects
Inexpensive—government data is often free
May provide information otherwise not accessible
Disadvantages
Uncertain validity
Data not consistent with needs
Inappropriate units of measurement
Too old

24. Primary Data Research
Survey
Observation
Experiment