How Secondary Research is defined and what it entails
Secondary Market Research Definition
Secondary Market Research evaluates various internally and externally available information sources, identifies the most beneficial, and obtains permissions to use.
The marketing discipline Secondary Research is an integral part of Market & Competitive Intelligence and supports the business-decision making process.
Market researchers might support various commercial functions such as Sales, Business Development and the management team and provides pro-active market and competitive intelligence tailored to current decision needs.
Market researchers that apply secondary research identify, evaluate, retrieve, organize, analyze and integrate key market insights. They obtain the usage rights for all data and communicate those rights to the users in following a clear code of conduct.
They deploy, own and manage delivery mechanisms to disseminate to their internal clients the most suitable business, scientific and engineering information from secondary online and manual sources about the market actors such as competitors, partners, customers and authorities.
Market research managers maintain a strong internal customer relationship so they can understand and support their customers mission and insights needs. They vigilantly monitor changes in all internal and external market dynamics.
Consultative and project management skills enable the market researchers to effectively engage in a dialogue that refines the market intelligence deliverables as they emerge from the original inquiry and shape up to most effectively support the targeted decisions.
Responsibilities of market researchers using secondary research
Effectively obtain and assimilate information to gain/maintain a thorough understanding of the competitive environment (key competitors, key initiatives, strategies and organizational structure)
Understand the needs of the internal customer audiences
Train users on new information sources and tools and provides guidance and assistance to users on their use
Apply professional project management skills to ensure all projects are completed on-time, within budget, and meet client objectives
Adopt company-wide standards for consistency in information sharing and format and suggest updates
Identify information sources that enhance the body of knowledge available to the organization
Develop new and innovative methods to increase the utilization of information resources and dissemination systems
Design, deploy and maintain intelligence gathering processes and systems to materialize the organizations internal market insight
Team with other Market and Competitive Intelligence professionals to integrate the developed insights into holistic reports that highlight key market signals
Negotiation of terms and prices with information resources that match the internal information needs
Act as consultant on copyright and the legal issues, document handling guidelines and ensures compliance across the organization
Create awareness and visibility to increase utilization of the deliverables
*Jens Thieme is a global B2B marketing professional, sharing his practical marketing experience, this marketing glossary and b2b marketing best practice examples.