Blog 7 - Methods of Research

It is important to conduct research before you start planning a new advertising campaign because it helps you to understand your customers and their preferences such as their location, age, gender, income level ect. It also helps to make the product more effective to marketing campaigns. Also, if you plain your new advertising campaign, it will help you understand how to make the product stand out more from all the other products.

Primary Research

Primary Research is your own research and it is not copied from anyone else. It is research to find your own answers to specific questions. Examples of primary research can be found in questionnaires, surveys, internet forums and in interviews or group research. and advantage of primary research is being able to explore the secondary research already preformed by other reachers. Carrying out their own research allows the media organisations to address issues specific to their own situation.

The advantages with primary research is greater control, not only does primary research enable the marker to focus on specific issues, it is also enables the marketer to have a higher level of control over how the information is collected. This is means a researcher can focus on his/her's product only. they can analyse it better. It also gives the researcher a higher level of control over how the information is collected. This means a media company can focus on their product only and will have better informations on which to base their analysis.

The disadvantages of primary research are the costs and the time it takes. it is time consuming because primary researchers have to start with no existing data so all the research has to be done from start to finish by the researcher. Primary research may be very expensive because all of the data has to be independently collected without any help from perviously existing data and it can take a lot of money to do that.

Secondary Research                  

Secondary Research is research that is done by someone else and can be used along side primary research. Secondary research is usually published in pamphlet, newspapers, trade publication, magazines and in newspapers. Media firms can also get information from the government, competitors or trade publications. there are advantages and disadvantages  to secondary research. The advantages to secondary Research is that it is easy because of the already existing data. Most of the already existing sources are accurate, therefore making your research easier.

The disadvantages are that you do not know who did the research and how honest and accurate it is. Also it can be biased and inaccuracies cannot be checked.