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Types of market research
Primary research
Primary research involves finding out new information. It finds the answers to specific questions for a particular purpose. These enquiries may take the form of direct questioning. For example, it may include face-to-face surveys, postal or online questionnaires, telephone interviews or focus groups. This type of direct contact with people is valuable as it gives specific feedback to the questions asked.
Qualitative and quantitative research
Quantitative research presents information in a numeric way, such as graphs, tables or charts that can be used to analyse the information.
Qualitative research provides information on consumer perceptions, such as:
how they feel about products and services
what they like or do not like
what they would want from a new product.
Testing
Companies often take marketing research one step further with actual test marketing. For example, the restaurant company may actually roll its chicken meal out into five of its 10 local restaurants, advertising the meal on local television and radio and through coupon magazine ads. Corporate marketing managers may then track sales and profits to validate the success of the new meal. The restaurant would then know if its marketing research was an accurate indicator of success.
Secondary research
Secondary research focuses on existing information. It uses published data that previous research has already discovered. This covers a wide range of materials, such as:
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market research reports
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sales figures
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competitor marketing literature
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government publications, e.g. national statistics.
Secondary research may be quicker to carry out but may give less specific outcomes for the topic in question.
4. Stock Exchange: The press gives prices and other information about the shares of the listed companies. What do you know about the stock market or stock exchange: types of market, key personnel, categories of investment, types of stocks and shares? Is investing on the Stock Exchange by definition a risky business? A stock exchange is a form of exchange which provides services for stock brokers and traders to buy or sell stocks, bonds, and other securities. Stock exchanges also provide facilities for issue and redemption of securities and other financial instruments, and capital events including the payment of income and dividends.
Common Stock
Common stock is, well, common. When people talk about stocks they are usually referring to this type. In fact, the majority of stock is issued is in this form.
Most shares of stock are called “common shares”. If you own a share of common stock, then you are a partial owner of the company. You are also entitled to certain voting rights regarding company matters.
If a company goes bankrupt and liquidates, the common shareholders will not receive money until the creditors, bondholders and preferred shareholders are paid.
Preferred stock
Represents some degree of ownership in a company but usually doesn't come with the same voting rights. (This may vary depending on the company.) With preferred shares, investors are usually guaranteed a fixed dividend forever. This is different than common stock, which has variable dividends that are never guaranteed. Another advantage is that in the event of liquidation, preferred shareholders are paid off before the common shareholder (but still after debt holders).
Market participants include individual retail investors, institutional investors such as mutual funds, banks, insurance companies and hedge funds, and also publicly traded corporations trading in their own shares. Some studies have suggested that institutional investors and corporations trading in their own shares generally receive higher risk-adjusted returns than retail investors.