Secondary market research (desk research) gathers second-hand data that already exists. This secondary data and information have already been collected by someone else – usually another company for a different research purpose.
Secondary market research is especially useful for businesses trying to identify the nature of the market as it provides insights into to changes and trends in an industry. This will help the firm to devise marketing strategies in response to these market changes.
Advantages of secondary market research
Benefits of conducting secondary market research include the following:
- Faster. It is faster as time only needs to be spent on finding the right publication as findings are already available. Hence, appropriate data and information can be obtained very quickly without the need to design complicated data-gathering methods.
- Cheaper. Data and information can be fairly cheap to obtain, and definitely much cheaper than primary research. Many online sources are available to the general public for free apart from market intelligence reports which usually cost a few thousand dollars.
- More sources. Secondary research is more accessible as more sources are publicly available to anybody, so managers can see a bigger picture. Also, it allows for comparison of data from different sources. As findings are based on larger samples, the research results are more statistically valid.
Disadvantages of secondary market research
Drawbacks of conducting primary market research include the following:
- Out-of-date. It is out of date as data and information were collected some time ago already – there is a time gap between collecting the information and when it is published. Also, these days, any data becomes obsolete very quickly, if not frequently updated.
- Not relevant. The answers may be irrelevant, incomplete or inappropriate for the research purpose. Secondary research usually provides only partial information as it was originally collected for a different purpose. So, it may not be as reliable and useful as primary data. The research will need to be further adapted to suit the specific need of the business.
- Not confidential. Widely available to others as every business organization on the market can have access to the research, especially competitors.
The advantages and disadvantages of secondary market research are usually the opposite of those for primary market research, as outlined above.
