Advantages of secondary market research

Secondary market research uses information that already exists, because someone else collected it for their own purpose — for example published government statistics, an article in a trade magazine or a report bought from a market research company. Because the data is already out there, it brings several advantages over gathering information first-hand.

Quicker and cheaper

The main advantage is speed and cost: nobody has to design a questionnaire, find willing people or wait weeks for replies, so the information can often be found in a single afternoon. Much of it is free, and even a paid report can work out cheaper than commissioning your own survey. A dog-grooming business that wants to know how much UK households spend on pets can use figures already published in an industry report instead of paying to ask people itself.

A wider view

Secondary research can give a wider range of information on a larger scale than one small enterprise could ever collect alone. A single business cannot survey the whole country, but national statistics and whole-industry figures already cover it. Much of it is industry-specific too: a trade magazine for bakers reports baking trends and equipment news, so it is directly relevant to one bakery in a way that general business news would not be.

Already analysed

Secondary data may already have been analysed by whoever collected it and presented as tables, percentages or averages. When the data is quantitative, this makes it easier to compare figures and spot trends — for example, average spending on takeaway food rising each year — instead of working through raw numbers yourself.