UNIT 3: LO1 Grid

What is the purpose of research?
The purpose of research differs, Predictive, The purpose of this type of research is to develop a model that predicts the likely course of events given particular intervening variables or circumstances, or Evaluative, to evaluate the impact of something, for example a new policy, event, law, treatment regime or the introduction of a new system. The primary purposes of basic research are documentation, discovery, interpretation, or the research and development of methods and systems for the advancement of human knowledge.
Type of research	Explanation	Examples	Advantages	Disadvantages
Primary	In Primary research, there is no data available for the researcher, hence the researcher has to start from scratch. This means that the researcher needs to design questionnaires, collect data from respondents and then analyse the result. If you are doing secondary research, the researcher have the necessary data available. These data are made available through other publications or reports, like newspaper or annual reports of companies. Targeted Issues are addressed, the organization asking for the research has the complete control on the process and the research is streamlines as far as its objectives and scope is concerned. Researching company can be asked to concentrate their efforts to find data regarding specific market rather than concentration on mass market.  Data interpretation is better. The collected data can be examined and interpreted by the marketers depending on their needs rather than relying on the interpretation made by collectors of secondary data.		Greater Control Not only does primary research enable the marketer to focus on specific issues, it also enables the marketer to have a higher level of control over how the information is collected. In this way the marketer can decide on such issues as size of project (e.g., how many responses), location of research (e.g., geographic area) and time frame for completing the project. Efficient Spending for Information Unlike secondary research where the marketer may spend for information that is not needed, primary data collections’ focus on issues specific to the researcher improves the chances that research funds will be spent efficiently. Proprietary Information Information collected by the marketer using primary research is their own and is generally not shared with others. Thus, information can be kept hidden from competitors and potentially offer an “information advantage” to the company that undertook the primary research.	Cost Compared to secondary research, primary data may be very expensive since there is a great deal of marketer involvement and the expense in preparing and carrying out research can be high. Time Consuming To be done correctly primary data collection requires the development and execution of a research plan. Going from the start-point of deciding to undertake a research project to the end-point to having results is often much longer than the time it takes to acquire secondary data. Not Always Feasible Some research projects, while potentially offering information that could prove quite valuable, are not within the reach of a marketer. Many are just too large to be carried out by all but the largest companies and some are not feasible at all. For instance, it would not be practical for McDonalds to attempt to interview every customer who visits their stores on a certain day since doing so would require hiring a huge number of researchers, an unrealistic expense. Fortunately, as we will see in a later tutorial there are ways for McDonalds to use other methods (e.g., sampling) to meet their needs without the need to talk with all customers.
Secondary	If the researcher is doing secondary research, there is no need to start from scratch, he or she uses the data or information done by other organizations or publications. The important thing is that there are advantages and disadvantages for both methods. Primary research is more time consuming and costly. While some secondary research may not suit the researcher's needs.		Low Cost to Acquire The use of secondary data has allowed researchers access to valuable information for little or no cost to acquire. Therefore, this information is much less expensive than if the researchers had to carry out the research themselves. Clarification of Research Question The use of secondary research may help the researcher to clarify the research question. Secondary research is often used prior to primary research to help clarify the research focus. May Answer Research Question The use of secondary data collection is often used to help align the focus of large scale primary research. When focusing on secondary research, the researcher may realize that the exact information they were looking to uncover is already available through secondary sources. This would effectively eliminate the need and expense to carry out there own primary research.	Quality of Research There are some disadvantages to using secondary research. The originators of the primary research are largely self-governed and controlled by the marketer. Therefore, the secondary research used must be scrutinized closely since the origins of the information may be questionable. Moreover, the researcher needs to take sufficient steps to critically evaluate the validity and reliability of the information provided. Not Specific to Researcher’s Needs In many cases, secondary data is not presented in a form that exactly meets the researcher’s needs. Therefore, the researcher needs to rely on secondary data that is presented and classified in a way that is similar to their needs. Incomplete Information In many cases, researchers find information that appears valuable and promising. The researcher may not get the full version of the research to gain the full value of the study. This is because many research suppliers offer free portions of their research and then charge expensive fees for their full reports. Not Timely When using secondary research, one must exercise caution when using dated information from the past. With companies competing in fast changing industries, an out-of-date research reports many have little or no relevance to the current market situation.
Qualitative	Qualitative research is designed to reveal a target audience’s range of behavior and the perceptions that drive it with reference to specific topics or issues. It uses in-depth studies of small groups of people to guide and support the construction of hypotheses. The results of qualitative research are descriptive rather than predictive.		Issues and subjects covered can be evaluated in depth and in detail. • Interviews are not limited to particular questions and can be redirected or guided by researchers in real time. • The direction and framework of research can be revised quickly as soon as fresh information and findings emerge. • The data in qualitative research depends on human experience and this is more compelling and powerful than data gathered through quantitative research. • Complexities and subtleties about the subjects of the research or the topic covered is usually missed by many positivistic inquiries. • Data is usually gathered from few individuals or cases therefore findings and outcomes cannot be spread to larger populations. However, findings can be transferred to another setting. • With this type of research, the researcher has a clear vision on what to expect. They collect data in a genuine effort of plugging data to bigger picture.	The quality of research is heavily dependent on the skills of the researcher and can be easily influenced by personal idiosyncrasies and biases of researchers. • Rigidity is more difficult to assess, demonstrate and maintain. • The quantity of data makes interpretation and analysis time-consuming. • Qualitative research is sometimes not accepted and understood especially within scientific communities. • The presence of researcher in the process of data gathering is unavoidable and can therefore affect or influence the responses of subjects. • Issues on confidentiality and anonymity can pose problems during presentation of findings. • Findings can be time consuming and difficult to present in visual ways.
Quantitative	Quantitative research, including surveys and customer questionnaires,  can help small firms to improve their products and services by enabling them to make informed decisions. Quantitative research is about asking people for their opinions in a structured way so that you can produce hard facts and statistics to guide you. To get reliable statistical results, it’s important to survey people in fairly large numbers and to make sure they are a representative sample of your target market.		Quantitative research allows the researcher to measure and analyse data. The relationship between an independent and dependent variable is studied in detail. This is advantageous because the researcher is more objective about the findings of the research. Quantitative research can be used to test hypotheses in experiments because of its ability to measure data using statistics.	The main disadvantage of quantitative research is the context of the study or experiment is ignored. Quantitative research does not study things in a natural setting or discuss the meaning things have for different people as qualitative research does. Another disadvantage is that a large sample of the population must be studied; the larger the sample of people researched, the more statistically accurate the results will be.
Market Research	The process of gathering, analyzing and interpreting information about a market, about a product or service to be offered for sale in that market, and about the past, present and potential customers for the product or service; research into the characteristics, spending habits, location and needs of your business's target market, the industry as a whole, and the particular competitors you face. Market research is for discovering what people want, need, or believe. Market research should be part of your business strategy. It can be undertaken at numerous stages from pre launch onwards. Therefore, the strengths that market research brings to the company are the target audience’s psychographics. Market research helps you identify opportunities		The advantages of market research are that the researchers can improve the developer’s takings from the finished game and reduce the risk of the game not performing well in the market against the other competition.	The disadvantages are that the sources may not be reliable sometimes not providing true information like the information website “Wikipedia,” which can be edited by anyone. If false information is taken from a website like this and then it is given to the client the finished product may not be a success.
Audience Research	Audience Research is an important tool to study the characteristics of target audience for various media including demographic and psychographic details of the audience, their exposure to various media, listening/viewing/reading habits, needs and tastes for various media contents and moreover, to estimate the size of audience for various programmes and programme ratings. Audience Research on the one hand provides programme feedback to programme producers to prepare audience friendly programmes, and on the others provides audience share for the various media contents to advertisers and marketers, which in turn, helps in fixing rates for the various programmes and channels. With this said, it gives consumer insight to the stakeholders and works as eyes and ears for the media organisations.
Production Research	Production research is always needed when developing a new product. It is research to help give information on the characteristics of the product. It focuses on the production of a product, in other words, how it’s made.	For example, advertisements are all made to sell themselves to the audience, so its down to the producers of the adverts to use production research to get more information on characteristics. When organisations do production research it helps them see an overview of the commercial viability, which is businesses skills to be successful and gain profit. The company has to be commercially viable first otherwise they won’t be as profitable as they want to be and will start to go downhill. When organisations carry out research they gather demographics, which shows the characteristics of the target audience or the population by their physical aspects such as age, sex and their postcode. This is the same for a health and beauty industry. For example, Lynx deodorant carries out research to gather demographics of their target audience, which then shows their characteristics and their physical aspects. Once this is found, Lynx can then justify what to do with the product and how to do it.	There advantages include the gain of knowledge of how much everything is going to cost and where to get all the main resources from. It will help to avoid copyright infringement to prevent buyers from being confused.	Disadvantages include unreliable sources like with market research and unreliable people and suppliers, which can affect the deadline date.
What types of research will you conduct to help with your work? What makes them the most effective for what you want to do? How will it help you and how will it benefit your production?