Question 1

What are the limitations of secondary research?

Accepted Answer

Secondary research or desk research is limited mainly by its inability – or at least very low likelihood – of completely addressing your specific issue because the original research was not designed for your purpose and because, as it already exists, it may already be outdated. Because you did not design the research and do not own the data, one of the primary challenges of using secondary data is to know enough about its origin and history to assess how well it applies to your issue or question and how much you can believe in it. Suppose you are marketing a new product to younger consumers as a low-priced alternative to existing offerings, and you are excited to find an online report that screams out that price is the most important consumer purchase decision factor in your category. You read further down and find that they have defined your category more broadly than you would, having included more expensive, high end products which are not directly competitive with your low-priced entrant. Continuing to read, you find that the research sample is drawn from a general population and that most them are from older age groups than you are targeting. Studying the detail, you find the report is years old and based on data collected when inflation was much higher than it is now. While the report addresses your business issue, it does not address it precisely enough to be very useful because it includes extraneous products, does not focus on your target segment, and was conducted when price was a major concern for almost every product regardless of category. Perhaps the report has some value as a proxy for your product and market, but then you notice that the report was posted by an anonymous blogger. After searching for information on the person who posted it, you find that the blogger only posts about lower prices, is funded by ads from companies that produce counterfeit knock-offs of mainstream products, and supports anti-capitalism causes. Plus, you find that someone implied on social media that the blogger is really a bot. Perhaps you are the kind of open-minded person who believes that the source is not important as long as you find the information to be useful. However, you are still curious, so you look up the original report on the author’s website and find that it does not scream out about low prices and is considerably longer than the first version you saw. Reading the content that had been redacted, you find that price is, indeed, the top consumer decision factor, but also learn that all your direct competitors already have low prices. Reliability is a middle tier concern, but all your direct competitors’ perform poorly on it. You still don’t have all the answers you want, but now you wonder if you should position your new product around reliability instead of focusing only on price. If you had taken the report at face value based on the headline, you would not know that it does not exactly address your business issue or your target segment, is out of date, and was edited to promote a specific agenda. After learning more about its origins, you have gained an insight that you didn’t have before, but are more convinced that you need to conduct your own primary research and that its design may need to be tweaked based on the hypothesis about reliability. Experts in secondary research or desk research would be able to work with these limitations. They would likely be able to find more sources (or have access to proprietary information) and could quickly assess the credibility of the research and source, how well it fits the business issue, and if it is current enough to be useful.

Question 2

How is secondary research different from primary research?

Accepted Answer

Primary research is based on data that is newly collected, while secondary research is based on data that already exists. The primary researcher designs and collects data, tailoring it to their business issue; the secondary researcher finds data, assesses its relevance and credibility and applies it to their business issue as closely as they can. In a sense, secondary research is the child of primary research because it is only possible once someone else has collected primary data. Even if the secondary research was conducted for a dissertation on philosophy, the original thoughts of the philosophers are primary data collected from their life experiences. However, the child is also the parent of the adult because primary research cannot exist until a researcher applies what they already know (and do not know) to design the objectives, scope, and methodology of the primary data collection. In fact, secondary or desk research is often executed for the explicit purpose of designing primary research. For example, secondary research can focus the scope by uncovering what is already known and does not need further study. Compared to primary research, secondary research can be less expensive and quicker to complete because downloading or purchasing data that already exists can be cheaper and faster than collecting new data. Primary research is considered to be more expensive and time-consuming, both in labor and calendar time, because it has to be designed and the data collected and analyzed before it can be used. On the other hand, primary research is designed and owned by the original researcher while secondary research is not controlled by the end user of the research. This makes it difficult for the secondary researcher to draw general conclusions because the results are not tailored to their situation, and it makes it harder to judge the quality and credibility because one can never be 100% sure of exactly how it was originally created.

Question 3

Is secondary research more cost-effective than primary research?

Accepted Answer

Under normal circumstances, secondary research is considered to be more cost-effective than primary research, although the advantage is more clear-cut on the “cost” side than on the “effectiveness” side. The cost of primary research, which involves surveys, interviews, or observations, includes line items such as the time to design it, hiring an interviewer or moderator, acquiring sample and incentivizing participants, possible facility costs, and time for data handling, analysis, and reporting. The process can last weeks or months, and, as outlined here, is clearly a significant expense. However, for some kinds of primary research, automated platforms can enable the researcher to execute all the necessary steps and have results overnight. The cost of secondary research, on the other hand, is relatively inexpensive, especially if you do it yourself. Searching the internet for free downloadable reports or visiting a library cost nothing or next to nothing. Governments and other organizations offer free resources, although some may charge a nominal amount (or more than a nominal amount). Some proprietary information can be very expensive, but one would not generally find the cost of these sources to exceed the cost of doing the research yourself. Imagine if you wanted to benchmark your next product launch against past launches of similar products. The cost of available benchmarking data could be significant, but it would not exceed the cost of identifying comparable launches, building a time machine, transporting yourself to the timeframe of each launch, gaining employment with each company launching a relevant product, and measuring the results. Similarly, even if you had to pay for government census data, it would still cost you a lot more to collect it yourself. On the “effective” side, even free research is not “cost-effective” if it does not address the business issue. If you conduct primary research yourself you can be reasonably sure that it will be effective because it is tailored to your needs and you control it. On the other hand, you may not ever find available existing data that is sufficient to address your business issue regardless of how much time you spend searching for it. Put more directly, sufficient data either exists or it doesn’t, and, if it does, acquiring it is likely to be cheaper than replicating the research that produced it. If it doesn’t exist, you need to decide whether the cost of primary research justifies the business value of having it. Experts in secondary research and desk research can help you with these assessments and find the most cost-effective solutions to address your business issue.

Question 4

What are some examples of secondary research in market research?

Accepted Answer

There are many different ways that secondary research and desk research are used in market research, ranging from finding simple answers to direct questions to complex studies that address strategic business issues. Simple or complex, if the answer is out there, secondary research can find it. A couple of applications of secondary research that can be more complex are competitive intelligence and business intelligence research, and the level of complexity can depend on the scope of the issue. For example, if you want to find out a couple of pieces of tactical information about a specific competitor, this might be accomplished via public information in a couple of web searches. If you want a detailed dossier of their strategic plans or an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of all competitors, more wide-ranging secondary research is required, likely conducted by someone with extensive knowledge of the industry and solid contacts within it. Primary research may also be conducted, such as interviews with employees or industry insiders. In another example of more sophisticated secondary research, some research suppliers have proprietary databases of historical activities in markets, such as launch results for different products from different brands. Historical benchmarks can be used to forecast the likely success of new products with similar characteristics and markets. Some companies have similar data for different kinds of advertising. At one time, these data were collected in primary research but now are used in a secondary role for benchmarking. It is unlikely that a brand would have such information about the success of competitor activities, but a canny research supplier may have collected and organized these data. In many cases, it is also unlikely that a brand would have accurate market share information because data on competitor sales would be needed to calculate it. Because there are many ways that market share data can be valuable, from evaluating competitiveness to calibrating models, sometimes competitors will volunteer sales data to an impartial third party which manages it, keeps it confidential, and updates each brand on their own shares without breaking out competitors. In product development, secondary research has many applications. For example, competitive research on proposed new products and features can help product managers decide whether to develop similar features in order to keep up or to focus on other features to deliver a distinct alternative. Secondary research on technology advances may result in inspiration to deliver features in a new way or convince a product team that the feature is not feasible. A more unique kind of secondary research concerns developing a custom knowledge management system for your organization. Once your primary research has fulfilled its mission, it can be used for secondary research throughout your organization. Perhaps it will help a colleague benchmark their success against a similar marketing activity, discover that the research they want to conduct has already been completed, or just learn about the business. Experts in secondary research have different types of experience, access to tools, and proprietary data, and you can find one to help you define your needs and develop solutions to meet them.

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