Primary Research Advantages And Disadvantages

What is Primary Market Research?

The process of collecting original data about the market, by the marketer on its own is called primary market research. The research is carried out after getting some knowledge from the secondary sources (eg. govt surveys or surveys by other companies). One can decide to go for primary market research if he feels that the data available from secondary sources is not fulfilling his requirements. Primary market research can be quantitative or qualitative in nature.

This process of research can either be done by the marketer or can be outsourced to the person or organisation which specializes in these type of surveys.
Although this type of exercise may be lengthy and costly the information which we gather from is highly relevant for designing marketing strategy for the client. Primary research is not carried out frequently and organizations generally depend of secondary sources for information. In order to go for this process, the researcher has to take care of everything, starting from designing questionnaires, collecting replies from respondents and then interpreting it depending on requirements.

Now lets discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Primary Market Research to the marketer.

Advantages of Primary Market Research


1) Targeted Issues are addressed. The organization asking for the research has the complete control on the process and the research is streamlines as far as its objectives and scope is concerned. Researching company can be asked to concentrate their efforts to find data regarding specific market rather than concentration on mass market.

2) Data interpretation is better. The collected data can be examined and interpreted by the marketers depending on their needs rather than relying on the interpretation made by collectors of secondary data.

3) Recency of Data. Usually secondary data is not so recent and it may not be specific to the place or situation marketer is targeting. The researcher can use the irrelevant seeming information for knowing trends or may be able to find some relation with the current scenario. Thus primary data becomes a more accurate tool since we can use data which is useful for us.

4) Proprietary Issues. Collector of primary data is the owner of that information and he need not share it with other companies and competitors. This gives an edge over competitors replying on secondary data.

Disadvantages of Primary Market Research


1) High Cost. Collecting data using primary research is a costly proposition as marketer has to be involved throughout and has to design everything.

2) Time Consuming. Because of exhaustive nature of the exercise, the time required to do research accurately is very long as compared to secondary data, which can be collected in much lesser time duration.

3) Inaccurate Feed-backs. In case the research involves taking feedbacks from the targeted audience, there are high chances that feedback given is not correct. Feedbacks by their basic nature are usually biased or given just for the sake of it.

4) More number of resources are required. Leaving aside cost and time, other resources like human resources and materials too are needed in larger quantity to do surveys and data collection.

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