study guide

The purpose of market research is to gather data on customers and potential customers. The collected data aids business decision making. This therefore reduces the risks involved in making these decisions. Marketing research can help a business Gain a more detailed understanding of consumers' needs - marketing research can help firms to discover consumers' opinions on a huge range of issues, e.g., views on products' prices, packaging, recent advertising campaigns
Reduce the risk of product/business failure - there is no guarantee that any new idea will be a commercial success, but accurate and up-to-date information on the market can help a business make informed decisions, hopefully leading to products that consumers want in sufficient numbers to achieve commercial success.
Forecast future trends - marketing research can not only provide information regarding the current state of the market but it can also be used to anticipate future customer needs. Firms can then make the necessary adjustments to their product portfolios and levels of output in order to remain successful.

Primary research is defined as factual, firsthand accounts of the study written by a person who was part of the study. The methods vary on how researchers run an experiment or study, but it typically follows the scientific method. One way you can think of primary research is that it is typically original research.
Secondary research is defined as an analysis and interpretation of primary research. The method of writing secondary research is to collect primary research that is relevant to a writing topic and interpret what the primary research found. For instance, secondary research often takes the form of the results from two or more primary research articles and explains what the two separate findings are telling us. Or, the author may have a specific topic to write about and will find many pieces of primary research and use them as information in their next article or textbook chapter.
Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative data can improve an evaluation by ensuring that the limitations of one type of data are balanced by the strengths of another. This will ensure that understanding is improved by integrating different ways of knowing. Most evaluations will collect both quantitative data (numbers) and qualitative data (text, images), however it is important to plan in advance how these will be combined. And there are four purposes of combining data: Enriching: using qualitative work to identify issues or obtain information on variables not obtained by quantitative surveys. Examining: generating hypotheses from qualitative work to be tested through the quantitative approach. Explaining: using qualitative data to understand unanticipated results from quantitative data. Triangulation (Confirming/reinforcing; Rejecting): verifying or rejecting results from quantitative data using qualitative data (or vice versa)