Knowing about your customer and their needs is crucial to business success, and starts with identifying your target customers, and analyzing their needs. Two types of research contribute to this knowledge: primary and secondary. Primary research involves going directly to your target and/or current customers, via interviews, surveys and questionnaires. Secondary research uses existing data, including published results from other surveys, industry overviews including companies in the market and consumer segments and demographics, sales and other financial data. Secondary research is often the starting point for ideas about what you'd like to explore in your primary research - and is a great way to get a lot of knowledge about an industry quickly, too. Combining the research methods can produce accurate and actionable data for product design and marketing decisions.
You can access the Sage Business collection from the Sage Research Methods database. Sage Business includes business-specific research methods and frameworks, business foundational theories and data analysis tools, and a set of business reference materials. The collection also includes searchable cases, including those focused on Entrepreneurship, Marketing and some focused specifically on research methods for business and management. To access Sage Business from the Research Methods database, click on the Business tab at the top of the database home page.