Primary Research
Primary research also known as ‘field research’ is any type of research collected yourself and not by others. Primary research carries out external methods like questionnaires, interviews and focus groups. because you’ve found the information yourself so you know that the information is up to date and reliable, other good thing is that you are able to ask and find out information specific to your product or service, although it is very time consuming and expensive to carry out.
Secondary Research
Secondary research is research that has been collected and found by other people and companies. It mainly include internal research from the business, it includes methods like sales figures and customer data.
Qualitative research
Is a subjective method and is often open ended. Its more personal then quantitative research, it asks about customers opinions and views to find out what a customer wants or needs from a product. A good example of qualitative research is focus groups because these are groups that try new products and give comment and concerns about it. This will come under primary research and is a good way to find out what the customer thinks.
Quantitative research
This is more done in the business and looks into itself, it relates more to numbers i.e. it analyses sales figure so the business can see approximately what they are going to sell and if they are able to boost that. Questionnaires are used on a large scale allowing them to do a statistical analysis giving the percentages and mean score; overall it gives an idea of what the customer’s response will be.
The next stage of market research is to use the research they are found to analyse it by using PETLE and SWOT, this overall will help the business to reach its SMART targets.
PESTLE- It is used to the organisations external macro environment and stands for