Primary market research (field research) collects new data for the first time. This primary data gives up-to-date information to answer the business’s specific research purpose.
Primary market research is especially useful for businesses in fast changing industries such as daily fashion or consumer electronics.
Advantages of primary market research
Benefits of conducting primary market research include the following:
- Relevant and useful. Primary research is carried out for the specific research purpose. Therefore, the answers collected from respondents are relevant to the research question and specifically address the problem that the business wants to solve.
- Up-to-date and unique. Only new data and information are collected so it is up-to-date and unique as no other business had conducted identical research in the past. It makes the research findings more reliable
- Confidential. No other business organization has access to the research questions and data collected. This may provide the business with competitive advantage over rivals.
Disadvantages of primary market research
Drawbacks of conducting primary market research include the following:
- Time-consuming. It is time-consuming as preparing questions and carrying out the research itself will take much time. When difficult data and information needs to be collected through surveys and interviews, it will be a very tedious task. This can of course delay decision-making leading to a possibility of losing market opportunities.
- Costly. Especially when the sample size is large and research must be done face to face. The business can either carry out the research by itself using the marketing personnel, or hire a market research agency that usually charge thousands of dollars with preparing detailed market research reports.
- Validity faults. There are always issues with validity of insights as not all respondents tell the truth. In addition, poor questionnaire design or any sampling error will produce biased results which are not accurate. There is always a risk that a sample will not represent the whole population. Hence, the research results will not represent everyone’s opinion.
The advantages and disadvantages of primary market research are usually the opposite of those for secondary market research, as outlined above.
