Seminar topic 2: Marketing Research

1)Gathering primary research is easy anyone can collect it.
Primary research is the information we gathering for the first time. It can be divided into quantitative research and qualitative research. Quantitative research is the information that can be easily analysed, such as closed questions from questionnaires. (BA handout,2013) In this situation, people are willing to spare some time to complete the simple questions. Compared with quantitative research, qualitative research is more difficult to collect, as it needs detailed information and opinions.
Methods of collecting primary research are varies, there are interviews, surveys and questionnaires, observations and experiments etc. From my prospective, whether everyone can gather primary research depends on different gathering methods and different levels of communication skills.

Interviews
There are three different ways to conduct interviews, and they are:
Face-to-face interviews can be conducted by having question and answer sessions with one or more people. Ask people on the streets, go door-to-door to gather information, or make an appointment with an expert.
Web-based interviews, on the other hand, make use of the internet to gather information so you will not have to the field for it. This latter method is also less costly and more convenient to use.
Telephone interviews are very much similar to face-to-face interviews, but they are shorter in comparison and more structured. You may also have to send a letter to inform the interviewee in advance so they would expect your call.

Surveys and Questionnaires
Both are popular means of gathering data and can reach a large number of people, but they need to be designed and reedited repeatedly to make them acceptable to people. You can either print out copies to hand them out to people or send them to your respondents through email. Though this method is relatively cheap to conduct and requires no prior arrangements, surveys and questionnaires have the risk of low response rates and some may turn out to be incomplete.

Focus group interviews and consumer panels
Gather a group of people, specifically from your company's target market, and have a facilitator guide them in examining a certain product and asking their opinions on said product. This method is primarily used to determine whether a company's new product or brand name will be acceptable to their target market and to the general public.

Observation
Observation is one of the simplest methods for primary data research and would not cost much. All you have to do is simply take note of the behavior of people towards your company's products and services. You can also try to observe how your competitors behave, and how they provide their products and services. Make sure that you are not alone in observing and have a number of colleagues to do the same thing so you can differentiate between fact and opinion.

Collecting primary data maybe difficult and may take a long time to finish, but the end result is that you have the necessary information you can use to make improvements to your company's products and services.

2) Secondary research is more reliable marketing information.
This is information that is already available form another source, and it can be either internal sources or external sources. Sources of secondary data include internal sources such as profit and loss statements, balance sheets, sales figures, and inventory records; and external sources such as government publications, periodicals, books, and commercial data. (Hausler.D,2000) Primary data collection requires more extensive research, more time, and more money. Secondary sources can sometimes provide information that is not directly available or would be too expensive to collect. Secondary data has the advantage of saving time and reducing data gathering costs. The disadvantages are that the data may not fit the problem perfectly and that