Secondary Data
Chapter 7
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Secondary Data
• Information that has already been
collected for another purpose.
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Classifying Secondary Data
• Internal
– Collected within your firm
– Sales, personnel turnover, profit record, etc.
• External
– Collected outside the firm
– Three types
• Published:
– For public use
– From gov’t, nonprofits, trade orgs, companies
• Standardized/Syndicated
– Standardized reports
– Usually subscription basis
• Databases
– Bank of information
– E.g. Proquest, LexisNexis, Dialog
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Advantages
• Quick
• Easy access
• Free or relatively inexpensive
• Avoid “reinventing the wheel”
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Disadvantages
• Not exactly what you need
– e.g. income per household instead of per person
• May be old
– Takes time to get collected and posted
• Difficult to assess quality
– Poorly gathered research worse than none at all
• Definitions/constructs may vary
– E.g. categories of charitable donations
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Purposes and Uses
• Fact finding
– Demographics, product use, trend analysis, market
tracking, environmental scanning
• Model building
– Relationships between variables
– Market potential, sales forecasts
• Data mining
– Computer driven analysis of large databases seeking
meaningful patterns
– Market basket analysis, sequence analysis
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Evaluating Data Quality
• What was the purpose of the
study?
• Who collected the data?
• What data were collected?
• How?
• Does it fit with other findings?
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Standardized Data
• Two kinds:
– Syndicated: all subscribers get same info
• Pros: cheaper, quicker, higher quality than own
• Cons: no control, no advantage, contracts
– Standardized services: researcher follows
same process but data varies by firm
• Pros: cheaper, quicker, higher quality than own,
more custom than syndicated
• Cons: can’t customize
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Applications of Standardized Data
• Assess consumer attitudes
• Define markets
– Grouping businesses: NAICS (SIC) business classification
scheme
– Geodemographics (geog + demog + psych)
– Grouping consumers (Goldfarb; VALS2)
• Track market variables
– Store scanner data
– Home diaries, scanners
• Monitor media use/effectiveness
– Nielsen, Arbitron, Roper Starch, Simmons
• Single source data
– Media + purchases
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Some Valuable Secondary Resources
• SecondaryData.com
• LexisNexis:
– subscription-based
• Proquest: access from library
homepage
– variety of databases including ABI Inform
• Statistics Canada:
– http://www.statcan.ca/
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The End
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