While academic research may come to mind when you hear the terms primary and secondary research, those approaches to collecting data are also relevant to the world of marketing. One requires the direct surveying and collection of information, while the other relies on reviewing and analyzing existing materials.
By learning the key differences between these two types of research, you’ll have a better idea of when and how to rely on each of them to gain valuable insight for your company.
What is primary research?
In marketing, primary research is information you collect firsthand when you’re gathering data about people or companies to analyze their needs, usually through surveys and interviews with people in your target market. You design the research yourself, basing your questions on the insight you want for your business. That may involve interviewing customers to learn about their pain points or setting up focus groups to get direct feedback on new product features.
Primary research gives you full control over the research methodology, so the data you collect is specific to your own circumstances and challenges. Because of that, primary research is the best tool for obtaining data that existing research doesn’t address, especially if that data is specific to your brand or circumstance.
What is secondary research?
Secondary research is when you gather insight from data that has already been collected and shared by others. That could be conducting a meta analysis on existing market research reports and trade journals to understand market trends, or reviewing government reports and newspaper articles to get a broader understanding of gaps in the market or demographic trends.
Secondary research methods rely on desk research and analyzing existing data from documents such as government agencies, private company data, and peer-reviewed journals. You can find some of these through public databases, such as census data or industry trade associations, company websites, or paid market research services.
It is easier to collect and more cost-effective to collect secondary research than it is primary research. This makes secondary research a good choice for preliminary stages of research, like when you need a broad overview of your market or want to determine what the focus of your primary research should be.
Differences between primary and secondary research
Sources of data
Primary research data comes directly from individuals who are part of the target market for your products. This type of information is especially valuable because it reflects real customer attitudes about your brand or product. Talking directly to your audience helps you find out what their needs are, test new product ideas, and understand what drives purchase decisions. This can help you refine your marketing message, adjust pricing, or identify new product opportunities entirely.
Secondary research data comes from published sources such as government agencies, trade journals, newspaper reports, and market research reports written by other researchers.
Cost and access
Primary research is more expensive and time consuming because you’re collecting data and analyzing it yourself. Running surveys, interviews, or focus groups often costs time and money, since you need to recruit participants. It can also involve expenses like paying your focus group participants for their time, giving them free products, or hiring specialized analysts.
Secondary research is often cheaper and less time-consuming because it relies on pulling relevant data from existing journal articles, trade journals, or published statistical data, rather than running your own study. Many secondary sources are free or low-cost to access, especially government databases and nonprofit reports. However, secondary data is not collected with your exact project in mind, which means it might not be as relevant to your business as the data you collect yourself.
Purpose
Primary research is helpful when you need direct feedback on specific product features, like whether the straps on a new backpack design feel comfortable, or if you need detailed information about consumer behavior that you can’t otherwise find in existing research. That could be how customers decide between two similar products at different price points or which features influence their decision to buy the pricier one.
Secondary research is critical for comprehensive insights about big-picture issues like market trends or an overview of competitors’ strategies. Oftentimes, market research starts with secondary research because it helps you survey the landscape before you invest time and money into collecting new data. By scanning existing reports, academic studies, or industry publications, you can spot gaps in data, and refine the right questions to ask in your primary research.
Applications of primary and secondary research in marketing
Primary and secondary sources don’t need to be used in that specific order. You can also conduct one type of research and not the other, or use both to obtain specific data tailored to your business’s unique needs. Here are a few examples of how that’s done.
1. Launching a brand
Whether you’re creating a new brand from scratch or working on a rebrand, you can start with secondary research to get an understanding of the lay of the land, and then perform your own primary research.
To learn how your new brand can stand out from the competition, you can do secondary research into competitors’ products and positioning. Once that’s done, you can conduct primary research to test your product ideas and positioning statements directly. You might share mockups and marketing copy with potential customers in a focus group to gather live feedback, for example.
2. Expanding product categories
If you have an established brand and want to test into new product categories, you might start with secondary research on social media, scanning conversations on Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit to see which competitor items customers are excited about.
Once you’ve created sample new products, you could do primary research by offering free samples at events to collect customer feedback about them.
3. Improving website performance
If you notice a certain part of your website is underperforming, you might start with secondary research to better understand web design and ecommerce best practices. This might lead you to a hypothesis about a design change you want to test.
Then, you can run A/B tests as a primary research study to test potential fixes. For example, if you see your site has a high cart abandonment rate, you can test a one page checkout against your current flow to see if it improves performance.
Tips for conducting primary and secondary research
Following these principles helps ensure that your data is accurate, ethical, and useful.
1. Define your research questions
Getting useful data starts by drilling down on what you’re trying to find out. A vague question can result in unhelpful answers. You need to ask the questions that matter to your business so the data you gather is clear and relevant. For example, instead of asking “Would you recommend this?” you might ask, “What would make you recommend this to a friend?” This type of focused question directs your data collection toward actionable insights.
2. Check data quality and credibility
The quality and credibility of your sources determines the accuracy of your outcome, regardless of how you’re gathering research. When conducting secondary research, look for how recent information is, whether it’s from a credible organization, and whether the research data comes from a representative sample of your target market.
When conducting primary research, make sure you have a representative sample. A sample is representative when the people surveyed share key relevant traits with your customers, like age, location, income level, or buying habits. If your audience is mostly young professionals in cities, but the sample skews older or rural, the findings may not be very relevant to your business.
3. Protect privacy and confidentiality
You might find protecting participants’ privacy helps build trust and leads to more honest, thoughtful answers. If you’re doing primary research, consider letting participants know how their responses will be used and keeping their identities confidential. For secondary research, it can be useful to check whether a source is open access, licensed, or purchased legitimately, since using pirated reports or proprietary data could create risks. Keeping privacy and confidentiality in mind may not only help you avoid potential issues but also strengthen your reputation with customers.
Primary and secondary research FAQ
How do you know if research is primary or secondary?
Primary research is data you collect firsthand, including with surveys, interviews, and experiments. Secondary research is based on data collected by others, like government publications, academic journals, and industry reports.
What is an example of primary research?
Gathering feedback on new product features is one way to conduct primary research. Other examples include surveys, focus groups, and product testing with your target audience.
What is a secondary research example?
Reviewing existing government statistics on consumer spending, looking at industry reports, or analyzing competitor websites are all examples of secondary research. This data was collected by someone else, not you or your company.
