King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals
Department of Management and Marketing
MKT 345 Marketing Research
Dr. Alhassan G. Abdul-Muhmin
Secondary Data Research
Reference: Zikmund, Chapter 7
Learning Objectives
At the end of the discussion you should be able to:
1. Define secondary data and distinguish it from
primary data
2. Explain the advantages and disadvantages of
secondary data
3. List and explain the various uses of secondary
data in marketing research
4. Identify the possible internal sources of
secondary data
5. Identify the possible external sources of
secondary data generally, and specifically in
Saudi Arabia
Secondary Data
• Data gathered and recorded by someone else
prior to, and for a purpose other than the
current research project.
• Usually historical and requires no direct access
to respondents or subjects
Advantages of Secondary Data
1. Easy availability – Secondary is easily
available from a wide variety of sources
2. Faster to collect – Compared to primary data,
secondary data can generally be collected
faster  suitable for projects with time
constraints
3. Cheaper to collect – Secondary data is
generally cheaper to collect than primary data
Disadvantages of Secondary Data
1. Currency - Available information may be outdated and
not suitable for our needs
2. Suitability of Units of Measurement - Units of
measurement may not match needs of the current
project  Data conversion may be necessary
3. Suitability of Terminology - Terminology used to
describe the data may be defined differently than needed
for the current project
4. Lack of Control – Researcher has no control over
accuracy of the data  Need for cross-checks and cross
verification
Evaluation of Secondary Data
•
•
Often secondary data needs to be evaluated to
determine its suitability for the current project.
Common evaluation Criteria
1. Applicability of the data to objectives of the current project
in terms of:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Relevance to current project’s problem definition
Applicability of time period
Applicability to relevant population
Applicability of terminology and variable classifications
Applicability of units of measurement
2. Accuracy of the data
•
•
•
Possibility of bias
Verification of accuracy of data collection
Cross-validation from original source
Uses of Secondary Data
1. In exploratory research to understand the
background and nature of marketing problems,
define research problem, and formulate
hypotheses for testing
2. Fact-finding (descriptive research)
– Identification of industry characteristics
– Identification of consumer behavior for a product
category
– Trend analysis
– Environmental scanning
Using Secondary Data in Fact-Finding
Using Secondary Data in Fact-Finding
Uses of Secondary Data
3. Model Building  e.g.
1. Estimating geographic market potentials
2. Forecasting  (a) environmental forecasting (b)
sales forecasting
3. Analysis of Trade Areas and Sites
4. Database Marketing - marketing activities that are
based on maintaining customer databases with
customers' names, addresses, phone numbers, past
purchases, demographic information, etc
Forecasting - Linear Trend Extrapolation
Figure . Trends and Projection of Total Ad Spending in Arabic Papers
, , ,
y= ,
, , ,
. x+
R = .
, ,
SR
,
, ,
, ,
, ,
Year
,
,
.
Forecasting - Nonlinear Trend Extrapolation
Figure . Trend & Projection of Total Ad Spending in English Language Newspapers
y = , , . Ln(x) + , , .
SR
R= .
Year
Forecasting - Regression
Oil Prices, Government Revenues, And Construction Activity
1
Year
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2
Average
Brent
Crude
Price
($/Barrel)
23.61
20.06
19.33
17.00
15.80
17.01
20.07
19.06
12.71
3
Average
Saudi Oil
Price
($/Barrel)
20.61
16.73
16.75
14.30
14.09
15.50
19.20
17.70
10.50
4
5
6
Govt.
Budget
Revenues
(billion
SR)
Number
of
Building
Permits
Issued
Total
Floor
Area
(mill.
m2)
30,720
46,136
55,689
72,620
43,733
29,872
29,044
27,408
18,282
33,884
40,673
51,594
29,901
24,062
21,822
21,496
129.0
146.5
179.1
204.4
143.0
121.0
7
8
Total
Length of
Value of
Boundary Construction
Walls
Contracts
(mill. L.
Awarded
M.)
(billion SR)
6,590
4,089
3,498
2,702
4,184
NOTES:
a) Columns 2-4, and column 8 are taken from a 1998 study by the National Commercial
Bank titled “The Saudi Construction Sector: Outlook for 1999”
b) Columns 5-7 are derived from “The Statistical Yearbook” published by the Ministry
of Planning
3,556
11,764
2,247
1,853
2,930
Forecasting - Regression
Contract Awards (t) = 0.351 Permits Issued at t-1 +
1477 Oil Price at (t-1) – 35614
R-square = 0.85
Contract Awards (t) = 0.191 Permits Issued at (t-1) –
4347
 R-square = 0.72
Sources of Secondary Data
1. Internal and proprietary sources
2. External sources
1. Producers of secondary data
2. Distributors of secondary data
Internal Sources of Secondary Data
•
Accounting system, routine company documents,
Salespeople’s call reports, Customer complaints,
Customer service records, Warranty return cards, etc
•
Often used in data mining projects (the use of computers to
dig through volumes of data to discover patterns).
Applications include:
• Market basket analysis - analyzing anonymous pointof-sale transactions to identify coinciding purchases or
relationships between products purchased and other
retail information.
• Customer discovery - data mining to discover customer
segments (e.g. loyal vs. non-loyal)
• Sequence discovery - mining data to detect patterns in
customer purchase sequences
External Sources - Producers
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Publishers of books and periodicals
Government departments
Media
Trade associations
Commercial establishments  two types of which are:
– Single-source data providers, and
– Specialized data providers
• Examples of Types of Data Provided:
–
–
–
–
–
Market share data
Demographic and census updates
Consumer attitude and public opinion research
Consumption and purchase behavior data
Advertising research, etc
External Sources - Distributors
1. The Internet
2. Libraries
3. Commercial vendors
Selected Sources of Secondary Data in
Saudi Arabia
1. Government Ministries and Departments  e.g. the
Central Department of Statistics, Ministry of
Planning collects and compiles data from most
government departments
2. Chambers of Commerce
3. Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) – Banking
and financial statistics
4. Annual reports of companies listed on the stock
exchange
5. Commercial research suppliers, e.g. Amer Research,
Pan-Arab Research Center.