What is the advantages of secondary market research?

Answer 1

· Secondary data is the most easily accessible data and saves the researcher the trouble of going through the tiresome process of collecting data personally. · Secondary data is readily available at cheap rates and is usually quite inexpensive. · Collecting secondary data and analysing it saves time and effort. · Secondary data is unobtrusive. It is easily available and the researcher can get it without much struggle. · Secondary data avoids data collection problems and it provides a basis for comparison. · It can be less expensive than gathering the data all over again. · This data type may allow the researcher to cover a wider geographic or temporal range. · Secondary data can allow for larger scale studies on a small budget. · Secondary data provides an opportunity for longitudinal analysis based on the previous waves of survey. · Secondary data is a good indicator for analyzing the social change overtime. · This type of data also provides an opportunity for cross-cultural analysis with fewer limits of time, cost and language. · Collecting secondary data leaves more time for making in depth data analysis. · Re-analysis of the same secondary data may offer different insights regarding the analysis by focusing on one variable or subgroup. · With secondary data the researchers might be able to test hypotheses they had not thought of, or examine the strengths of their arguments. · Secondary data may be available which is entirely appropriate and wholly adequate to draw conclusions and answer the question or solve the problem. Sometimes primary data collection simply is not necessary. · It is far cheaper to collect secondary data than to obtain primary data. For the same level of research budget a thorough examination of secondary sources can yield a great deal more information than can be had through a primary data collection exercise. · When the researcher has collected the secondary data, there is no need to repeat the field work necessary for the collection of data. · The time involved in searching secondary sources is much less than that needed to complete primary data collection. · Secondary sources of information can yield more accurate data than that obtained through primary research. This is not always true but where a government or international agency has undertaken a large scale survey, or even a census, this is likely to yield far more accurate results than custom designed and executed surveys when these are based on relatively small sample sizes. · It should not be forgotten that secondary data can play a substantial role in the exploratory phase of the research when the task at hand is to define the research problem and to generate hypotheses. The assembly and analysis of secondary data almost invariably improves the researcher's understanding of the marketing problem, the various lines of inquiry that could or should be followed and the alternative courses of action which might be pursued. · Often the secondary data provides valuable background for the research - for example, it enables users to judge whether a small sample they have gathered is typical of the national population. · Government survey organizations have considerable expertise and relatively massive resources, including the power to compel participation (e.g. in census-taking), so samples are more likely to be of large size and truly representative of the population. · Secondary sources help define the population. Secondary data can be extremely useful both in defining the population and in structuring the sample to be taken. For instance, government statistics on a country's agriculture will help decide how to stratify a sample and, once sample estimates have been calculated, these can be used to project those estimates to the population.