Research Methods

Qualitative Methods	Quantitative Methods
Methods include focus groups, in-depth interviews, and reviews of documents for types of themes	Surveys, structured interviews & observations, and reviews of records or documents for numeric information
Primarily inductive process used to formulate theory or hypotheses	Primarily deductive process used to test pre-specified concepts, constructs, and hypotheses that make up a theory
More subjective: describes a problem or condition from the point of view of those experiencing it	More objective: provides observed effects (interpreted by researchers) of a program on a problem or condition
Text-based	Number-based
More in-depth information on a few cases	Less in-depth but more breadth of information across a large number of cases
Unstructured or semi-structured response options	Fixed response options
No statistical tests	Statistical tests are used for analysis
Can be valid and reliable: largely depends on skill and rigor of the researcher	Can be valid and reliable: largely depends on the measurement device or instrument used
Time expenditure lighter on the planning end and heavier during the analysis phase	Time expenditure heavier on the planning phase and lighter on the analysis phase
Less generalizable	More generalizable

Primary Research: Includes gathering your own new data that has not been collected before. For example surveying people, questionnaires, you could use interviews on a specific group of people. Advantages of using this method is that the researcher controls when and how he collects the information. This also means that the researcher is responsible for the data and may be asked questions about its source and reliability later on in the process. Data can be very useful when researchers are doing a small experiment or running a small survey, as it takes less time to analyse the results.

Disadvantages of Primary Market Research

1) High Cost. Collecting data using primary research is a costly proposition as marketer has to be involved throughout and has to design everything.

2) Time Consuming. Because of exhaustive nature of the exercise, the time required to do research accurately is very long as compared to secondary data, which can be collected in much lesser time duration.

3) Inaccurate Feed-backs. In case the research involves taking feedbacks from the targeted audience, there are high chances that feedback given is not correct. Feedbacks by their basic nature are usually biased or given just for the sake of it.

4) More number of resources are required. Leaving aside cost and time, other resources like human resources and materials too are needed in larger quantity to do surveys and data collection.

Secondary data is the data collected by someone else other than the researcher himself. This data can be gathered from government records, books, trade associations, national or international institutes, statistics agencies, etc.

Advantages of Secondary Research

1)  Time and Cost effective : Usually time and cost required to collect secondary data is less than efforts required to collect primary data. Data is available freely or at far lesser cost through secondary sources.
2)  Extensiveness of data : Data collected by governments and other institutes is usually very extensive and covers a large spectrum of issues. An organization can filter that data and consider only parts which they are targeting.
3)  Basis of Primary Research : Data collected from secondary sources gives an idea to organization about effectiveness of primary research. From secondary data one can form hypothesis and can evaluate the cost and efforts required to conduct own surveys. One can also note down issues, which are not covered from secondary research and, need to be addressed through primary research.

Disadvantages of Secondary Market Research

1)  Data Definitions : Secondary Researcher needs to understand various parameters and assumptions that primary research had taken while collected information. A term may have different meaning for different people, example a term 'youth' used is ambiguous and one needs to find what is the assumed age taken by primary researcher.
2)  Inaccuracy of Data : As we are not gathering our own information, first-hand, we are totally dependent on someone else's efforts. Primary researcher may have been biased or may have used questionable methods to collect data; this can be pretty risky for secondary researchers to base their report on such data.
3)  Time Lag Issues: Information collected from books, historical surveys are usually not sync with the times and might have changed drastically. Thus making such information a foundation of research may be highly risky for the business or project.
4)  May not be Specific : Extensiveness of such information is its benefit as well as drawback. Organization will not get answers to their specific issues through this data directly and one needs to 'mine' further into it to get relevant information.
5)  Proprietary Issues : Some of the secondary sources might have copyrighted their information and using them without permission can lead to various legal complications.