The fact that someone is doing market research a certain way does not mean that you need to copy it. You need to know what your options are, and they start with the different types of market research.
Primary research
Whenever research is conducted by you or on your behalf and you need to create data to solve a specific problem, it is called primary market research.
Examples: Focus groups, interviews, surveys (more on these later in the article).
Key benefits: This research is specifically tailored to your brand, products or services and you can control the quality of the data.
Secondary research
When you use pre-existing data, such as that collected by other companies and organizations, you are conducting secondary market research.
Examples: Third-party sources such as articles, white papers, reports, industry statistics, previously collected internal data.
Key benefits: You get a macro view of your market because secondary research includes other market participants and likely utilizes a larger data set than your primary sources.
Primary research or secondary research
Primary and secondary market research are different, but by no means opposites. In fact, it is recommended that you use both types.
While primary sources will give you a market overview focused on your business, secondary research will tell you how other businesses are doing and how your findings compare to a larger sample size.