Chapter 2 Secondary Research

2.1 Overview - Data is the New Oil and Analytics is the Engine

Data is increasingly accessible to more people thanks to the Internet. Data collection is the practice of gathering quantitative and qualitative information (e.g., text data) on different KPIs (variables, factors, etc.) with the aim of improving our decision-making process.

Firms need to know what has happened, what is happening at present, what is likely to happen, and what should be done to achieve better performance. Cravens and Piercy (2005) suggest that the business analysis stage includes such concepts as revenue forecasts, cost estimation, profit projections, risks assessment and the possible cannibalization of sales.

In general, there are two types of data you could use for marketing research. Primary research refers to research that you conduct using surveys, polls, focus groups, interviews, and experiments.

In case you have noticed the job prospects in the business analytics industry, you might want to check out the Johns Hopkins Data Analytics certificate (free/develop skills in data science using R) or the Google Data Analytics Certificate (No relevant experience required) and see if it is a good fit for your career path (Ref: https://grow.google/dataanalytics/). This certificate was launched in spring 2021 and is focused on helping you learn job-ready skills like analyzing data with Excel spreadsheets, SQL, Tableau, R, etc.

2.2 Collecting Social Media Data

It is important to notice that more and more businesses are collecting social media data for the purpose of conducting primary marketing research. Keep in mind that Twitter users are “younger, more likely to identify as Democrats, more highly educated and have higher incomes than U.S. adults overall(Wojcik and Hughes, 2019).

When conducting new product or service research, Twitter might be a suitable channel for businesses to find highly-specific groups of professionals (Twitter 2020). Crimson Hexagon is a company that is focused on offering consulting services on branding, social media analysis, natural language processing (NLP), etc. However, there are free, open source programming languages (R, JavaScript, Python, etc.) available for practical social media marketing research.

Secondary research is used extensively by our marketing managers. Secondary data is usually made available by government agencies, market research firms, and trade associations.

Before start collecting data for your research, it is important to think about the following questions (Simon Fraser University Library):

  • What do you need to know about the broad market for your type of product or for your industry?

  • What would you like to know about the competitors and alternative products?

  • Are the general business conditions likely to play a factor?

  • Do you need to know anything about the demographics and preferences of consumers?

2.3 Sources of Secondary Data

US Census: https://www.census.gov/

Data.gov: https://www.data.gov/

Ca Open Data: https://data.ca.gov/

The stock market data: https://finance.yahoo.com/

Nielsen Consumer Panel Data: https://www.aeaweb.org/rfe/showRes.php?rfe_id=1935&cat_id=5

Kaggle Open Datasetshttps://www.kaggle.com/datasets

Other types of data: https://www.qlik.com/us/products/qlik-sense/data-sources

2.4 Perform Secondary Data Research

Before performing a research study, it is important to define your research objective. More frequently, companies use marketing research to understand customers and their product offerings and to study the competitors on a quarterly or more frequent basis (Lehenchuk 2019). For instance, the California Avocado Commission (CAC) launched the following dashboard and additional resources to help growers, producers, policy makers, retailers, and food services navigate the complexity of avocado production, pricing, sales, etc.

https://hassavocadoboard.com/

https://www.californiaavocadogrowers.com/marketing/marketing-dashboard

Data itself has little value. Marketing researchers have to constantly predict market trends for long-term strategic planning. When it comes to long-term planning, it is important to get insights from different sources of data. For instance, pricing and retailing decisions may affect stakeholders with different interests and different levels of influence (Bakucs & Fertő 2015; Crawford 2019).

2.4.1 Case Study - Avocado Market Analysis and Trends

To help you better understand how marketing research works and how it could benefit different stakeholders using secondary research, I designed the following case study with data from the Hass Avocado Association. You will learn how decision makers could benefit from using business analytics. See more details at Avocado Pricing at Retail: https://rpubs.com/utjimmyx/retailpricing.

The objective of this case project is to explain the price of avocados using some basic descriptive analysis.This analysis can be used by producers, retailers, and groceries to make decisions about their pricing strategies, advertising strategies, and supply chain strategies among others. Some additional analysis may follow after this episode. Your feedback is highly appreciated.

2.4.2 Other Examples

It is also important to understand how secondary data research is conducted by government organizations, companies, and consulting companies.

The following dashboard is desiged to help dairy farms compare their pasture and crop eaten value with similar farms in the area:

Pasture Potential Tool - https://shiny.rstudio.com/gallery/dairy-farms.html

For instance, to help policy makers, health professionals, and the general public make better decisions, the California State Government launched the COVID-19 dashboard:

(available at the CA government site: https://covid19.ca.gov/data-and-tools/):https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID-19CasesDashboard_15931020425010/Cases?%3Aembed=y&%3AshowVizHome=no

You may want to check out the sreenshot of this dashboard available here:

https://bookdown.org/utjimmyx/marketing_channel_a_strategic_analytical_and_technological_persp/#why-tableau

The following Microsoft BI dashboard is launched by the Kern County Public Health Department to track the COVID19 cases in Kern County:

https://kernpublichealth.com/covid-19_dashboard/

In May 2020, the Times published an article that the US has flattened the curve (Wilson, 2020). To understand how Germany and the United States handle the COVID19 pandemic, I designed the following dashboard to see if it was the case:

https://rpubs.com/utjimmyx/newcovidusagermany

To find out how different companies are using Tableau or analytics solutions to drive performance, please click on the links below:

https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/how-walmart-is-pushing-people-analytics-forward

How do you like these dashboards? Can you offer an idea of a dashboard that might be used to make better decisions?

2.5 Discussion Questions

Please work on questions 1-4 and 5 or 6 and post your work in the discussion forum. Once you are done, please post two tweets about your learning experience.

  1. Why do companies use secondary data? Identify a data source you could possibly use for your course project.

  2. According to Crawford (2019), what is the price range (the highest and lowest prices recorded) for an average avocado? Visit The Hass Avocado Board (https://hassavocadoboard.com/) and list at least three reasons different stakeholders could benefit from their marketing research.

  3. Visit the dataset available below, raise one question you could possibly answer with the data, and explain how a stakeholder could benefit from your research question. Try to answer your research question using the statistics (or Excel) skills you learned before.

Reference: https://www.californiaavocadogrowers.com/industry/industry-statistical-data

  1. Open the dataset named “avocado.csv” available in Canvas (your LMS), and answer the following question: Which city has the largest sales of organic and conventional Hass avocados in the dollar amount, respectively, for year 2015? What could be the possible reasons for Hass avocado’s popularity in these cities? Try to answer your research question using the statistics (or Excel) skills you learned before. Please make sure to add your Excel spreadsheet workbook to the discussion post.

Please work on one of the following two questions (5 and 6)

  1. Please watch the following YouTube video (Adventures in test marketing:). Once you finish watching the video, please post a question(or topic) that you are interested in and answer a question that is raised by your peers. To facilitate interactions with your peers, please post your questions and responses in the discussion forum directly. For full credits, your responses should be about 1-2 paragraphs (or a minimum of 80 words). Here is a sample question:

What the video meant to you? What did the video teach you about hypothesis testing or marketing research / (impression it made on you)?

Reference: Adventures in test marketing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wx5B2p8qyg&t=54s

6.Please read one of the following PDF documents. Once you finish reading the article, please post a question(or topic) that you are interested in and answer a question that is raised by your peers. To facilitate interactions with your peers, please post your questions and responses in the discussion forum directly. For full credits, your responses should be about 1-2 paragraphs (or a minimum of 80 words).

https://www.ashokcharan.com/Marketing-Analytics/~st-t-test.php

https://www.sas.com/content/dam/SAS/support/en/sas-global-forum-proceedings/2018/2746-2018.pdf

https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/publication/documents/2018-02/intro_to_stats_2018.pdf

References

Crawford. 2019. Avocados remain huge retail draw https://www.supermarketperimeter.com/articles/3788-avocados-remain-huge-retail-draw

Bakucs, L. Z., & Fertő, I. (2015). Empirical tests of sale theories: Hungarian milk prices. AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS-ZEMEDELSKA EKONOMIKA, 61(11), 511-521.

Lehenchuk 2019. How To Research The Market And Identify Opportunities. https://producttribe.com/marketing-amp-partnerships/market-research-guide

Wilson, 2020. The U.S. Has Flattened the Curve. Next Up Is ‘Squashing’ It — and That’s Not Going Well. https://time.com/5827156/squashing-squash-curve-coronavirus-covid19/

Peterson, E. B., & Orden, D. (2008). Avocado pests and avocado trade. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 90(2), 321-335.

Simon Fraser University Library. https://www.lib.sfu.ca/help/research-assistance/subject/business/secondary-market

Wojcik and Hughes, 2019. Sizing Up Twitter Users. Pew Research. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-users/

https://business.twitter.com/en/help/campaign-setup/campaign-targeting/tailored-audiences.html