Planning involves assessing historical and current market conditions, setting objectives, developing marketing programs, and analyzing the results. Collection and analysis of data about markets and customers is an important part of the process. Factors such as sales trends, size and growth of a market, product life cycles, market share data, seasonality, profits, and industry capacity can be analyzed to develop marketing strategies. The research process uses both primary and secondary data.
Primary research is original data collected for the problem at hand, usually at a significant cost.
Typical examples are sampling and focus groups. Most marketing research consists of surveying samples of people either by personal interview, by mail, by telephone, or these days, via computer. Secondary research makes use of existing, publicly available data. Although the match between the problem and the data is not likely to be exact with secondary research, there are some significant benefits. You can save time and money by utilizing existing information, and often the secondary research process will clarify the amount and kind of primary research that will be needed.