Reading: Secondary Marketing Research
Tapping Existing Sources of Information
Before diving into primary research for a marketing research project, it’s always wise to investigate whether there’s an existing body of relevant information that you can work with. It’s at least a place to start, and it may show you what you’re missing. This is known as secondary research.
Secondary research uses secondary data, or source information that has previously been collected either inside or outside the organization. Internal data and some external data are freely available or have only a nominal cost. Other secondary-data providers charge fees to marketing researchers who want to access their data sets, reports, and customer insights. Common types of secondary data are described below.
Internal Data
A company’s internal data, such as sales and marketing records, customer account information, product purchasing, and usage data are typical secondary data sources. Previously prepared marketing research reports may also be a great source of insights as you seek to solve a new or related business problem. Marketing researchers may also compile a large amount of internal data into a shared database and conduct marketing analytics to understand patterns in customer behaviour, market trends, and other insights to guide management and marketing strategy decisions.
Government and Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) Data
Many government agencies as well as nonprofits and other nongovernmental organizations collect and publish vast amounts of freely available data that may be useful for marketing research purposes. For example, demographic data published by Statistics Canada offers great insight into the makeup of the Canadian. population by age, gender, educational attainment, and many other factors. The Nova Scotia Government’s Open Data Portal has a range of data sources for the province including business and economy, government administration, nature and environment, and social services. The World Trade Organization publishes economic data, trade statistics, and information about the regulatory environment for business for more than one hundred WTO member countries.
You can view data for the median household total income on the Statistics Canada website[1].
When leading auto-repair franchise Midas developed a formula for “placing” their new franchised stores in successful locations, they turned to government research sources such as U.S. census data. The company explains that they look for “streets with high traffic counts, with 50,000 or more residents within three miles, and with speed limits no higher than 45 miles per hour. We look for areas that have several other major food, automotive, or retail brands, and we like to put new locations near car dealerships, since many customers transition their freshly out-of-warranty cars from dealer maintenance to Midas.”[2]
These examples of governmental and NGO data just scratch the surface of the many and varied publicl