Market research

In one paragraph

Finding out what customers want and how the market behaves, before you spend money guessing.

There are two separate distinctions, and mixing them up is the classic error.

Primary vs secondary is about who gathered it. Primary is collected by you for this purpose — surveys, interviews, focus groups, observation, trials. Secondary already exists — government statistics, trade reports, your own sales records, competitors' published accounts.

Qualitative vs quantitative is about what kind of data it is. Qualitative is words and opinions: why people feel something. Quantitative is numbers: how many, how often, how much.

You can have quantitative secondary data (official statistics) and qualitative primary data (interviews). The two splits are independent.

What each is good for

Qualitative tells you what questions to ask and why people behave as they do; it cannot tell you how common the behaviour is. Quantitative tells you how many and how much; it cannot tell you why. Serious research usually runs qualitative first to find the right questions, then quantitative to size the answer.

How to actually use it

• Start with secondary — it is free or cheap and often answers half the question before you spend anything on primary.
• Beware asking people what they would do. What customers say they will buy and what they buy differ; a small real test beats a large hypothetical survey.

Where it breaks down

• Samples that are too small or badly chosen produce confident nonsense. So do leading questions.
• Secondary data was gathered for someone else's purpose, at some point in the past. Check when, and by whom, and why.

If you are being examined on it

Be precise about which split you are using. 'A survey is secondary research' is a guaranteed lost mark.

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