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C H A P T E R
Secondary Research
M
arketing research falls into two main categories: primary
research and secondary research. The distinction between them
is fairly simple: Primary research is original work done with your
particular study objectives in mind. Secondary research is the use
of previously existing resources to meet your research goals.
Though much of this book focuses on primary research, it’s
important to point out that a lot of time and money can be saved if
you first do a bit of poking around to see what other work has
already been done in your area of interest. There’s little sense in
reinventing the wheel, and we highly recommend that you leverage
existing sources of research information before committing to more
time-consuming and expensive methods.
Secondary research has many uses, and can come in many
forms. In some cases, it might be the only way to cost-effectively
obtain certain types of data. We find secondary research especially
useful in informing our study development process by identifying
issues that impact the industry and marketplace of clients for whom
we are conducting primary research projects. Beyond simply
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Government Publications
Your tax dollars go to pay for an astounding number of things, and
market research is one of them. Government agencies like the U.S.
Department of Labor and the U.S. Census Bureau regularly com-
mission high-quality (expensive) studies about the economy and
about the consumers and businesses that form it. International
agencies and foreign governments do the same. In recent years,
much of this information has been made accessible via the Web, so
a good first stop in your search should be the main Web pages of
the government agencies responsible for producing these reports.
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General Press
Simply searching the back archives of major newspapers and mag-
azines can yield quite a bit of useful data. Like you, reporters scour
the same resources for interesting bits of data to include in their
articles. If they’ve done the dirty work for you, why not profit from
their efforts? You’ll often be able to find references back to the orig-
inal study that you can follow up on, view the entire study, or find
even more pertinent data. In addition to data dug up in their own
searches, reporters often receive copies of studies or press packets
of information from studies that market research companies are
promoting for sale (see Paid Sources of Secondary Research).
Reporters may include just the piece of data you need in an article
they are writing, and save you the expense of having to purchase the
research results. Sometimes the free data isn’t sufficient for your
project and you’ll want to purchase the study; but at the very least,
searching press archives is another avenue for discovering these
studies.
Industry Journals
Industry journals are magazines that are dedicated to covering even
the most esoteric goings-on in their particular business. In addition
to providing news such as business mergers, new product launches,
CEO appointments, and the like, trade journals often quote useful
statistics of one kind or another. You won’t find these journals in the
supermarket magazine section, so you’ll have to do a bit of hunting
to find the ones you want. Fortunately, the Web comes to the res-
cue. Sites like Looksmart (www.looksmart.com) and DirectHit
(www.directhit.com) have excellent hierarchical menus and search
tools that allow you to ferret out an amazing number of trade jour-
nals that either are reprinted on the Web, or provide the contact
information necessary to subscribe to the print editions or to search
back issues. The National Directory of Magazines (www.media
finder.com/mag_home.cfm) maintains links to a vast array of peri-
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Trade Associations
If a trade journal doesn’t exist for the industry you are attempting
to study, chances are that there is still an organization that exists to
promote the common interests of people in that line of business.
These groups are treasure chests of useful information and people.
Larger associations often publish major industry journals and spon-
sor industry-wide research. If not, they will likely have available a
list of useful publications and fact sheets about their constituency.
Even better, the staff at these organizations can usually point you in
the right direction more quickly than your own detective skills
would.
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