By: Christopher Naufel

PURPOSES OF RESEARCHThe three main and most useful purpose of research are exploration, description and explanation.

1. Exploration

• Conducted to explore a topic or familiarize oneself with a topic.

• This is often done through the use of focus groups which are frequently used in market research.

• They are essential when researcher is breaking new ground and typically yield new insights into a topic for research.

2. Description

• Describes situation and events.

• Researcher observes then describes what they researched.

• Description may contain something the audience cannot observe or understand from first sight.

3. Explanation

• Explain things: who? What? When? Where? Why?

• Explanatory studies tend to answer ‘why’.

• This leads the audience to further understand the researcher.

PRIMARY RESEARCH• Primary research is new research that you do and find out answers for yourself.

• Carried out to answer specific issues or questions. It can involve questionnaires, surveys or interviews with individuals or small groups.

• Primary research does not focus on published information. Primary research sources could include competitor vendors and suppliers, competitor clients and customers, etc.

• Primary research is useful to my project because it allows me to keep up to date as to what people think of a certain product, being the most research done and it also is the most reliable source as it is research done by myself.

• The primary research I intend to do in my research are questionnaires. This is because it allows me to find out exactly what I want to know from people directly in order for me to produce the best product/advert I can.

• Since my target audience would be people from the public the best way to know what they want is to specifically ask them myself.

• I would also aim to carry out primary research with a focus group.

• This would allow me and the focus group to be open to discussion and ideas about a certain product instead of only having to answer direct questions.

• Focus groups could allow me to broaden my idea about my product and how I will be willing to advertise it.

PRIMARY RESEARCH

• My primary research techniques are both qualitative and quantitative.

• I intend to present my quantitative data in a bar graph.

• It would easily allow me to see what the most popular answer/choices were which would help me to further develop ideas for my product.

• I intend to present my qualitative data in a pie chart because it also shows me percentages of answer, equally allowing me to see what the most popular answers were.

PRIMARY RESEARCH TECHNIQUES

• Secondary research is research that you collect from a source which have done the primary research themselves. In a secondary research you would get someone else’s findings of a certain research with their results and answers.

• For my project , the secondary research I intend to do is to collect evidence which shows what makes a good advert which makes people want to buy a certain product.

• From an advertising book I could find out what the most popular brands are due to their advertising, and what it is that the certain company conveyed across the advert which made people want to own it.

• From the same source I could also find out what affects the way a brand/product is advertised: does the brand create a personality or do they show how the product can be used?

SECONDARY RESEARCH

• Another secondary research technique I intend on doing is finding out data from previous questionnaires and focus groups.

• This would allow me to see what the public actually thinks, which is smart because that is the audience I would be selling the product to.

• In order to do this I could enter the Pringles website and find out what primary research they have previously done in order to create an advert and personality for Pringles that the whole public would enjoy

• I would also find out if advertising has affected product sales and popularity

SECONDARY RESEARCH

• My secondary research would be both qualitative and quantitative.

• I intend to present my findings in graphs, pie charts and tables.

• This would allow me to see what the majority of the public thinks and everyone’s individual answers with their own ideas would be shown which allows me to expand my ideas as to how I can pitch my product.

• My quantitative and qualitative data can both be shown in a bar graph because it allows me to use numbers and words. They would both allow me to see the number of people that chose a specific answer to something, which is the easiest way to distinct popular answers in a graph.

QUALITATIVE / QUANTITATIVE

• However, as always, there can be weaknesses with using secondary data.

• The secondary data may be from an unreliable website which could portray false findings and results.

• The data may be old and not updated and people’s survey answers and data could change. The findings will not be very recent meaning it is not what people think at the current time which I would be producing my advert.

• This could lead to me have wrong interpretations of what the public think

• To avoid this I will be using books as secondary research and only use reliable websites which are recommended by teachers and have a high popularity.

WEAKNESS