CHAPTER 5
SECONDARY DATA AND PACKAGED INFORMATION
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
In this chapter you will learn:
5-1 To understand the term big data
5-2 To know the differences between primary and secondary data
5-3 To learn different classifications of secondary data, including internal and external
databases
5-4 To understand the advantages and disadvantages of secondary data
5-5 To learn how to evaluate secondary data
5-6 To learn how to use the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey
5-7 To know what packaged information is and the differences between syndicated data
and packaged services
5-8 To understand the advantages and disadvantages of packaged information
5-9 To know the applications of packaged information
5-10 To learn the uses of social media data and their advantages and disadvantages
5-11 To understand the Internet of Things and its future potential
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Big Data
Secondary Data
Large amounts of data from multiple sources
Primary versus Secondary Data
• Primary data is developed specifically for the research project
• Secondary data has been previously gathered by someone else for some other
purpose than the current research project
• Uses of Secondary Data
Classification of Secondary Data
• Internal Secondary Data
o Database
o Record
o Fields
o Internal databased
o Customer relationship management
o Data mining
o Micromarketing
o To deepen customer loyalty
o To reactivate customer purchases
o To avoid serious customer mistakes
External Secondary Data
• Published sources
• Official statistics
o Open Data Policy
• Data Aggregators
Advantages and Disadvantages of Secondary Data
• Advantages of Secondary Data
o Can be obtained quickly
o Inexpensive compared to primary data
o Readily available
o Enhances primary data
o May be all that is needed
• Disadvantages of Secondary Data
o Incompatible reporting units
o Mismatch of the units of measurements
o Unusable class definitions
o Outdated data
o Lack of information to assess credibility
Evaluating Secondary Data
• What was the purpose of the study
• Who collected the information
• What information was collected
• How was the information obtained
• How consistent is the information with other information
The American Community Survey
• Collects economic, social, demographic, and housing information as part of the
Decennial Census Program
What is Packaged Information?
Advantages and Disadvantages of Packaged Information
• Syndicated data
• Packaged services
Applications of Packaged Information
• Measuring consumer attitudes and opinions
• Market segmentation
o Geodemographics
• Monitoring media usage and promotion effectiveness
• Market tracking studies
Social Media Data
• User generated content
• Social media monitoring
• Social media listening
• Types of information
o Reviews
o Tips
o New uses
o Competitor news
• Advantages and disadvantages of social media data
• Tools to monitor social media
Internet of Things
• Physical objects embedded with software
• Passive data
• Wearable technology
KEY TERMS
Primary data Secondary data
Internal secondary data Big Data
Database Record
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Fields Internal databases
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Data mining Micromarketing
External data Published sources
Syndicated data Data aggregators
Geodemographics American Community Survey (ACS)
Packaged information Packaged Services
Tracking studies Social media data
User-generated content Social media monitoring
Social media listening Sentiment
Internet of Things Passive data
Wearables Wearable technology
TEACHING SUGGESTIONS
1. Although students have University library staff members are invaluable in orienting
students on how to use secondary sources. Contact the business reference librarian
and arrange for an orientation session on the use of business databases and other
online resources of secondary data.
2. Large companies typically have library and secondary data specialists on staff. If you
have a local contact, invite the company librarian or secondary information specialist
to class to describe the secondary sources used by the company’s employees. This
person can also be a good resource on internal secondary data. He or she may be able
to describe the various types of internal databases maintained in his or her company.
3. Because syndicated data and services are the “hidden” side of marketing research,
instructors should make use of the examples and exhibits provided in the chapter.
Also, some syndicated data companies are quite willing to provide brochures,
promotional literature, and other examples of their services. Maintaining a file on
these companies is useful in generating class examples.
4. One way to introduce students to secondary sources is to give them an assignment
that will require them to investigate various secondary sources. Here are some
sample assignments to get students in the library or to compel them to use Internet
sources to search for information.
a. Determine population size, growth and composition for a particular county
in your state. Assign different counties to various students or student
teams and have them make class presentations on their findings.
b. Determine how many and which states have state lotteries, gambling
casinos, video poker, and riverboat gambling.
c. Determine states or regions of the United States that have high or low
rates of: (1) motor vehicle accidents; (2) weather damage (flooding,
tornados, hurricanes, drought, and so on.); (3) home value assessment; (4)
multiple family dwellings; or (5) crime rates. What are the implications of
these findings for insurance companies?
5. A more focused (more than Teaching Suggestion 4, above) assignment would be to
have each student select an industry and to search electronic databases and/or printed
sources. Here is an example assignment: Instructors should pre-plan the assignment
with their reference librarians for online secondary data sources and information
databases to make sure the resources are available to students.
a. Have students select an industry in which they have a career interest.
b. List the major firms (up to 10) in the industry. Rank them in some
meaningful way such as by sales volume, number of employees, or profits.
c. Provide market share data for a selected number of firms (or
product/service brands).
d. Using ABI Inform or Business Source Premier, identify three articles that
have been written relating to some aspects of your chosen industry in the
last three years.
6. There are several secondary data source companies identified in the chapter, and their
web site addresses are included as a reference. Because these web sites are in
constant flux, it is not possible to faithfully list their contents. Instructors may wish
to take a few minutes visiting the following web sites to familiarize themselves with
each company’s services and products. With Internet access capability in the
classroom, an instructor can visit key web sites and demonstrate variety, depth, and
specific examples.
ACLU created “Ordering a Pizza in 2010.” Check it out at www.aclu.org/pizza/. What
do you think? Do you have an account on Amazon.com or eBay or some other Internet
retailer? Do you use that online account? Why?
The pizza movie is fictitious but realistic in that if a company or someone did gain access
to a consumer’s private information – address, credit card transactions, medical records,
recent purchases, personal data – it could be used to customize services or penalize the
consumer. It illustrates the risks to consumers and ethical issues faced by companies that
collect and use this information. If students have Amazon or eBay accounts where their
data is stored, breaches of security or lax security would jeopardize their credit ratings
and perhaps cost them large amounts of money and time.
How to Find Articles on Marketing Research at Quirks.com
Want to know how to search Quirk’s Marketing Research Review to find secondary data
on almost any topic in marketing research? Go to www.quirks.com and look for “Our
Articles” on the menu bar. You have several search options available, including
searching by topic or by industry. Quirk’s allows you to search for free but if you want
the most current articles, you have to subscribe to Quirk’s Marketing Research Review.
ANSWERS TO END-OF-CHAPTER QUESTIONS
1. What are big data, and why do they represent both an opportunity and a challenge?
Grouped under the term big data, information is available from more sources than
ever before. Big data can be defined simply as large amounts of data from multiple
sources. The term big data has been popularized in recent years in response to the
2. Briefly describe the history of secondary data in the United States.
The Founding Fathers of the United States stipulated in the Constitution that a census
be taken every ten years to determine appropriate representation in Congress, votes in
the Electoral College, and funding of government programs. The decennial census in
3. What are secondary data, and how do they differ from primary data?
4. Describe some uses of secondary data.
5. Describe the classifications of secondary data?
6. What is a database, and what are the components of a database?
7. Describe a database that would be useful to a local pizza restaurant.
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A database that would be useful to a local pizza restaurant would include the number
of households and/or people live within a radius around the restaurant in which there
are also no other pizza restaurants. Included in that data would be useful information
on income levels, jobs, kids per household, etc. Such a database would also include
the preferences of those potential pizza eaters, such as toppings, crust style, etc.
8. What is meant by CRM?
9. What is the difference between data mining and micromarketing?
10. Give an example of a company that uses micromarketing and explain how.
11. Explain why you think Target’s use of its database information in Marketing
Research Insight is ethical or not ethical.
Responses will vary by student but should include a discussion about how Target
collects data on every person who shops at its stores, and assigns then a unique guest
12. Briefly explain the three different types of external data discussed in the chapter.
There are three types of external secondary data:
• Published sources are those sources of information that are prepared for public
13. Name three external sources of secondary data available to you through your school
library.
14. What are the five advantages of secondary data?
15. Discuss the disadvantages of secondary data.
Five of the problems associated with secondary data are: (1) incompatible reporting
16. Which disadvantage of secondary data is resolved by geodemographics and why?
17. How would you go about evaluating secondary data? Why is evaluation important?
In order to properly use secondary data, you must evaluate that information before
you use it as a basis for decision making. A user must be most cautious when using an
Internet source because few quality standards are applied to most Internet sites.
18. Describe the ACS in terms of the advantage it offers as well as how to retrieve data.
The main advantage of the ACS is that it will provide data annually instead of
19. What is meant by packaged information?
20. What is syndicated data? Give an example of a company that supplies syndicated
data and describe the information it provides.
21. What are packaged services? Give an example of a company that supplies a
packaged service and describe the type of information it provides.
22. Esri’s market segmentation service, Tapestry Segmentation, would be classified as
which type of packaged information? Why?
23. What are the advantages and disadvantages of syndicated data?
Advantages of syndicated data are shared costs, high quality of the data, and speed
24. What are the advantages and disadvantages of packaged services?
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With packaged services, the advantages are experience of the company providing the
service, reduced cost, and speed of service. The disadvantages are inability to
customize services and the service firm not being knowledgeable of the client’s
industry.
25. Describe some areas in which packaged information may be applied.
The applications areas are listed along with the examples provided in the chapter.
Application Area Examples
Measuring Consumer Attitudes The Maritz Poll
and Opinion Polls Yankelovich Monitor
Ipsos Global@dvisor
Harris Poll
Gallup Poll
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Arbitron Inc., Portable People
Meter (PPM), MRI’s Starch
Readership Service
Adnorms
26. Give examples of four types of user-generated information that can be found on
social media.
Social media data, also termed user-generated content (UGC) are any information that
is created by users of online systems and intended to be shared with others. Social
27. What are the advantages and disadvantages of social media?
Social media have a number of strengths. First is their currency. Social media can
provide fast, immediate, up-to-the-minute feedback on any of the 4 Ps associated with
a brand. Second, it is relatively inexpensive to access the data. Third, social media
data represent the unprompted, unfiltered, and authentic voice of the consumer. As
such, social media sources can lead to new understandings that might not emerge
28. What is the Internet of Things?
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that allow them to gather and send data. A major category of objects that are part of
the IoT are wearables, or wearable technology, which are clothing or accessories that
are equipped with computer technology or sensors that allow the collection and
sharing of data
29. Access your library’s online databases. Describe how your library helps categorize
the many databases to guide in your selection of sources appropriate for business.
Responses will vary by student and the organizational methods used by the library.
30. Go online to your library’s website. Can you locate a database that would be a good
choice to find publications such as journal articles, trade publications, or
newspapers? What are they?
31. Find your library’s online databases and check to see if any of them have the ability
to automatically put an article you retrieve in a format suitable for citing (e.g., MLA
or APA).
32. Refer back to Marketing Research Insight 5.4. Would Jacksonville, Florida, actually
meet the criterion to be a test market? Cite information on which you base your
decision.
33. In the chapter we used an example of going to the Esri Tapestry Segmentation
website for an Active Learning exercise. Go to those instructions. Enter your
residence ZIP code and describe the inhabitants in terms of the one or more 65
consumer types available in the software.
Responses will vary by student, ZIP code and consumer types.
34. Go to the website Social Mention (www.socialmention.com). Use the website to
search first Coca-Cola and then Pepsi. What are the differences in strength, passion,
sentiment, and reach between the two brands? What does that mean? (Hover your
mouse over each term for a definition.)
35. Name five applications of the Internet of Things for a supermarket.
CASE SOLUTIONS
Case 5.1 The Men’s Market for Athleisure
Founded in 1998, Lululemon Athletica, the Canada-based maker of stylish, upscale
workout clothes, had grown very quickly. A pioneer of the “athleisure” trend for
women—that is, wearing casual clothing outside of the gym—Lululemon had been
best known for its yoga pants. Lululemon has been pursuing the strategy of growing
its male market. Despite Lululemon’s association with women’s clothing, men’s
clothing has had strong profits and some loyal customers.
Answers to Case Questions
1. What internal secondary sources does Lululemon already have that the company
could use to gain insights on its men’s market? Be sure to consider supplier records,
retail store records, website information, and sales force records.
2. Which external published sources and data aggregators have useful information
about Lululemon’s current position and the potential for the men’s athleisure
market? In your investigation, include the following:
Table 5.1)
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activities by Lululemon, such as their product recall. Trade journals will provide
information on trends in the marketplace and industry. Academic journals might be
less helpful as data could be out of date by the time it is published, and industry
journals might offer more updated information.
3. Where does Lululemon currently have men’s only stores? Use the American
Community Survey to identify a promising metropolitan statistical area (MSA) for
Lululemon to locate its next men’s only store. Justify your decision.
4. Conduct an investigation of social media to examine user-generated content related
to Lululemon.
a. What are the trending topics on social media related to Lululemon? (Use
a free social media aggregator, such as Addictomatic or Twazzup to
investigate.)
5. Integrate your information from the preceding questions to determine whether or not
Lululemon should invest more heavily in its men’s market. Justify your response
using information from your search of secondary data.
Student responses will vary based on what they found during their research of social