MKT 335 - Retailing Management and Promotion

Primary Research is gathered first hand. The researcher has conducted the research (or commissioned it to be conducted) themselves. It means going directly to the source, instead of using pre-existing or pre-collected data sources. 

Some examples of primary research include: 

• Surveys
• Interviews
• Questionnaires
• Focus Groups
• On-site visits
• Data mining
• Web crawling/scraping

Pros: 

• Unfiltered data collection
• Determine your own questions
• Information is up-to-date and relevant

Cons:

• Time-consuming
• Costly
• Requires infrastructure to collect and analyze

Secondary Research is secondhand. Someone else has taken the raw information, or done their own research. Then they have analyzed and examined that information, creating a report. 

• Data gathered by various organizations (i.e., not data gathered by you)
• Published market research reports
• Published industry analysis
• Newspaper articles
• Literature Review
• Case Study
• Content Analysis
• Government Records/Other Public records

Pros: 

• High quantity available
• Immediately available
• Saves time, money, and energy compared to conducting primary research

Cons:

• May not be as relevant or current as desired
• Influenced by other perspectives and researchers
• Varies in quality, credibility, reliability