All right. Welcome back.
For this lesson, I'd like to explain how you transition
from internal and secondary research to primary research.
And how these processes flow into each other.
I will depict internal secondary and primary research
with a very specific project in mind.
After this lesson, you'll be able to define
the primary research you need to conduct for your project.
Okay, let's begin by recalling an example I used in a previous lesson.
So let's continue our discussion of the client in the gaming industry,
who wanted market research done on their current customers.
The internal research that I received from them was customer and profile information.
It included basic consumption and usage of information of their loyalty card members.
The loyalty card data allowed me to conduct internal research.
Then, I also received a secondary report
from them on trends in the casino and gaming industries.
My team and I also did some internet research in terms of trends in the gaming industry.
We went out and gathered secondary research.
We learned a lot about how preferences are changing.
So we added that secondary research to
the internal research data from the loyalty card data.
Then we had some discussions about what direction we were going to take
and what recommendations we were going to make in terms of collecting new information.
That's what fueled the decision to conduct
some internet surveys of customers and non-customers.
Those internet surveys were the primary research.
It was research that had never existed before.
And its action oriented and adaptable.
It's adaptable because we wanted to measure satisfaction of services.
Then we wanted to determine further information about usage and consumption.
We had already learned that the over 50 age group that was highly satisfied,
visited the casino over 100 days a year.
That came from the loyalty card information.
Once we went on to conduct primary research by doing an internet survey of that group,
we learned different things about them.
We also conducted primary research,
by surveying the first timers or the young men that represented this audience,
that were members of the loyalty club.
With the survey, we learned a little bit about them.
And then, we actually diagnosed behavior.
In terms of what made one group more satisfied than the other group.
In designing the survey,
we got to shape questions and direct questions to each one
of these groups either similarly or differently.
Such primary research provided the adaptability and
flexibility to be able to ask one group something and another group something else,
if we wanted to, or to compare them against each other.
So, primary research is a research process that addresses the primary objective.
But it goes beyond that by addressing the primary objective,
specifically, by doing new research that addresses the existing problem.
Primary research is a result of
identifying other potentially important areas to research,
or restructuring a misguided business problem or research objective.
The secondary and internal research has guided you to
a particular direction or it's given you a few certain paths to take.
This leads to a point where you've learned as much as you can learn in that way.
That's when you proceed to consider various tools for primary research.
There are many tools to help the researcher address the business problem or objective.
These tools tend to fall into two categories:
quantitative research and qualitative research.
When market researchers seek a quantitative solution, they may use surveys.
And when they need a qualitative solution,
it might be focus groups.
Surveys, are by far the most common type of market research.
As technology has created
new and more affordable ways to get closer to the customers and to the public.
There are also other ways to gather primary data such as,
in-depth interviews or observation.
In-depth interviews are a qualitative approach
which delves deeper into the mind of the individual.
Surveys often fail to do this.
So, when doing primary research,
you need to choose a tool appropriate to the client's need.
At that point, you have to recommend a path.
And when you go down that path,
you have the opportunity to ask better questions or talk
to a better more relevant group of customers or target market.
So, after you have done the internal and secondary research,
you then consider what further information is needed.
That's the point at which you decide,
whether and how to use
qualitative or quantitative research as you develop your research plan further.
That's usually the point in the initiation process,
when it makes sense to venture into conducting primary research.
Jim FongDirector, UPCEA Center for Research and Marketing Strategy
