Question

Explain how secondary and primary research can be used to assess the marketing feasibility of establishing environmentally sustainable business, supporting your answer with applying on a realistic or proposed example.Explain how secondary and primary research can be used to assess the marketing feasibility of establishing environmentally sustainable business, supporting your answer with applying on a realistic or proposed example.Explain how secondary and primary research can be used to assess the marketing feasibility of establishing environmentally sustainable business, supporting your answer with applying on a realistic or proposed example.

Answer 1

Every company, whether it's a new one in the market trying to set its foot in the industry or an already existing company trying to further expand needs to study its market really well along with consumer and competitor analysis in order to flourish in the right direction with the right approach and strategy.

Thus, it becomes essential for them to conduct a market research which includes either primary or secondary research based on the need, and sometimes both for additional advantage.

A primary research is a direct research conducted with the consumers either through a mail or telephone call, or even sometimes face to face, to get a detailed experience analysis of products or services on the consumers. It's a first say through direct questions and long conversations which helps a company understand how they should make their marketing strategy based on these analysis. This process is usually very costly.

Whereas, secondary research is a little passive as the name suggests. It is not a direct questionnaire or conversation with the consumers, rather it is the use of data that is already present in the market in the form of research data, or data from some government sources, or sometimes even, data from research done by competitors. This process is not as costly as primary research.

Lets take for example, an automobile company which is trying to set up its distribution centre in a new state. And in order to review its expected sales estimates while following an environmentally sustainable approach, it is trying to conduct a marketing research. The research would be conducted in two phases.

Primary research: Wherein the consumers would be directly asked about the buying patterns of cars in that area. Whether they prefer diesel cars or petrol cars. Or even Solar or electric cars could be a preference. This research would be based on direct conversation with the consumers in that area to study their buying behaviour and would help the company strategise its approach.

Secondary research: During this phase the company would collect data from various sources. This data is usually collected over the years and helps in passive strategy making. Sales Data for other Automobile companies in that area would fall in this research. Also the data for pollution levels in that area would also be a part of research which could be obtained from government offices and thus alternate automobile solutions could be introduced in that area.

Overall, a proper marketing strategy should be a combination of primary and secondary research in order for it to be successful in a long term approach.