Market Appraisal: Research

Abstract

If you have questions that need answering or you want to find things out you need to do some research. There are two main forms of research: desk research and field research:

• Desk research is sourcing information and answers from printed publications, electronic media and your own internal resources. This is always the first place to start any research process and you may be surprised at the amount of relevant information revealed.

• Field research is invariably more expensive than desk research and careful planning is needed at all stages to ensure that the research project is actually proceeding without bias, within budget and is likely to produce informative answers. The two main types of field research are quantitative research and qualitative research. As their names suggest, quantitative research counts things (how many? how often? and so on). Qualitative research elicits opinions, ideas to help identify trends or develop new products.