Module 3
Data Collection
RRK 2022
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DATA
Data are facts, figures and other relevant materials, past
and present, serving as bases for study and analysis.
Types of Data:
• Demographic , Socio-economic :
Characteristics of Individuals: age, race, religion,
marital status, education, occupation, income, etc.
• Behavioural Variables: Attitudes, opinions,
awareness, knowledge, etc
• Organizational Data: origin, ownership, objectives,
resources, function, performance and growth.
• Territorial data: Related to geophysical characteristics
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Data collection
• It is a process of acquiring data for the purpose at hand.
• Data collection is the process of gathering and measuring
information on variables of interest, in an established
systematic fashion that enables one to answer stated
research questions, test hypotheses, and evaluate
outcomes.
• It may be of
- Primary in nature
- Secondary in nature
• Various methods, tools and techniques are adopted while
collecting relevant data.
• The data characteristics such as Reliability, applicability
etc have to be taken care of while collecting data.
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Sources of Data Collection
Primary Data Secondary Data
Observation Method Internal Record Searching
Questionaire Method Publications,
Interview Method Annual Reports, Budgets…etc
Schedule Method Data Bases
Case Study Method Magzines
Survey Method Company websites,
Census Method
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Quantitative Data collection
• These are based on mathematical calculations in
various formats.
• Methods of quantitative data collection and
analysis include questionnaires with closed-ended
questions, methods of correlation and regression,
mean, mode and median and others.
• Quantitative methods are cheaper to apply and
they can be applied within shorter duration of time
compared to qualitative methods.
• Moreover, due to a high level of standardisation of
quantitative methods, it is easy to make
comparisons of findings.
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Qualitative Data collection
• On the contrary, do not involve numbers or
mathematical calculations.
• Qualitative research is closely associated with words,
sounds, feeling, emotions, colours and other elements
that are non-quantifiable.
• Qualitative studies aim to ensure greater level of depth
of understanding and qualitative data collection
methods include interviews, questionnaires with open-
ended questions, focus groups, observation, game or
role-playing, case studies etc.
• Your choice between quantitative or qualitative
methods of data collection depends on the area of
your research and the nature of research aims and
objectives.
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Primary Data Collection
• As the name implies, this is original, first-hand data
collected by the data researchers.
• Primary data is the type of data that has not been around
before. Primary data is unique findings of your research.
• Primary data collection and analysis typically requires more
time and effort to conduct compared to the secondary data
research.
• This process is the initial information gathering step,
performed before anyone carries out any further or related
research.
• Primary data results are highly accurate provided the
researcher collects the information. However, there’s a
downside, as first-hand research is potentially time-
consuming and expensive.
• Primary data collection methods can be divided into two
groups: quantitative and qualitative.
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Observation Method
• At its most simple, observation involves ‘seeing’ things
– such as objects, processes, relationships, events
– and formally recording the information. There are different types
of observation.
• Structured or direct observation is a process in which
observations are recorded against an agreed checklist.
• Expert observation is usually carried out by someone with
specific expertise in an area of work, and involves the expert
observing and recording information on a subject.
• Observation may also be carried out as a participatory
exercise.
• Where this is the case the intended beneficiaries of a project
or programme are involved in planning an observation
exercise, observing, and discussing findings.
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Use of Observational Method
• There are a variety of reasons for collecting
observational data.
• Some of these reasons include
- When the nature of the research question to be
answered is focused on answering a how- or what-
type question.
- When the topic is relatively unexplored and little is
known to explain the behaviour of people in a
particular setting.
- When understanding the meaning of a setting in a
detailed way is valuable
- When it is important to study a phenomenon in its
natural setting.
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Advantages
– Simple to collect data. Observation does not
require tech skills of the researcher.
– Allows for a detailed description of behaviors,
intentions, and events.
– Greater accuracy and data quality. The observer
can view participants in their natural
environment and directly check their behavior.
– Doesn’t depend on people’s willingness to
report. Some respondents don’t want to speak
about themselves or don’t have time for that.
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Disadvantages
– Cannot study attitudes and opinions by
observing.
– Can take a lot of time if the observer has to
wait for a particular event to happen.
– A high potential for observer’s subjective
bias. The personal view of the observer can be
an obstacle to making valid conclusions.
– Expensive method. It requires a high cost,
effort, and plenty of time.
– Situations of the past cannot be studied.
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Interview Method
• Interviews: Interviews are probably the most common tool used in
planning, monitoring and evaluation.
• They can be carried out with one person at a time (individual
interviews) or groups of people.
• They can be administered formally or informally.
• They can be carried out face-to-face or through remote media such as
telephone and Skype.
• Interviews can also be conducted through written questions via letters
or email.
• Interviews may be structured, semi-structured or open-ended.
o Structured interviews are based around a core set of questions
that are always asked in the same order.
o Semi-structured interviews also contain a core set of questions,
but allow the interviewer to ask supplementary questions, or
change the order in which questions are asked.
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Types of Interviews
• Personal interviews: Personal interview method requires a
person known as the interviewer asking questions generally
in a face-to-face contact to the other person or persons.
• At times the interviewee may also ask certain questions and
the interviewer responds to these, but usually the
interviewer initiates the interview and collects the
information.
• This sort of interview may be in the form of direct personal
investigation or it may be indirect oral investigation.
• In the case of direct personal investigation, the interviewer
has to collect the information personally from the sources
concerned.
• Telephone interviews: This method of collecting information
consists in contacting respondents on telephone itself. It is
not a very widely used method, but plays important part in
industrial surveys, particularly in developed regions.
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Types of Interviews…contd
• Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI):
It is nothing but a similar setup of the face-to-face
interview where the interviewer carries a desktop
or laptop along with him at the time of interview
to upload the data obtained from the interview
directly into the database.
• CAPI saves a lot of time in updating and
processing the data and also makes the entire
process paperless as the interviewer does not
carry a bunch of papers and questionnaires.
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Advantages
– Accurate screening. The interviewee can’t
provide false information such as gender, age,
or race.
– The interviewer can capture raw emotions,
tone, voice, and word choices to gain a deeper
understanding.
– Interviewers can ask follow-up questions and
require additional information to understand
attitudes, motivations, etc.
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Disadvantages
– High costs as this method require a staff of
people to perform the interview.
– The quality of the collected data depends on
the ability of the interviewer to gather data
well.
– A time-consuming process that involves
transcription, organization, reporting, etc.
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Surveys/questionnaires Method
• Surveys or questionnaires created using online
survey software are playing a pivotal role in online
data collection be is quantitative or qualitative
research.
• The surveys are designed in a manner to legitimize
the behaviour and trust of the respondents.
• More often, checklists and rating scale type of
questions make the bulk of quantitative surveys as it
helps in simplifying and quantifying the attitude or
behaviour of the respondents.
• There are two significant types of survey
questionnaires used to collect online data for
quantitative market research.
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Surveys/questionnaires Method…contd
• Web-based questionnaire:
• This is one of the ruling and most trusted methods for
internet-based research or online research.
• In a web-based questionnaire, the receive an email
containing the survey link, clicking on which takes the
respondent to a secure online survey tool from where
he/she can take the survey or fill in the survey
questionnaire.
• Being a cost-efficient, quicker, and having a wider reach,
web-based surveys are more preferred by the researchers.
• The primary benefit of a web-based questionnaire is
flexibility; respondents are free to take the survey in their
free time using either a desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile.
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Surveys/questionnaires Method…contd
• Mail Questionnaire: In a mail questionnaire, the survey is mailed out
to a host of the sample population, enabling the researcher to connect
with a wide range of audiences.
• The mail questionnaire typically consists of a packet containing a cover
sheet that introduces the audience about the type of research and
reason why it is being conducted along with a prepaid return to collect
data online.
• Although the mail questionnaire has a higher churn rate compared to
other quantitative data collection methods, adding certain perks such
as reminders and incentives to complete the survey help in drastically
improving the churn rate.
• One of the major benefits of the mail questionnaire is all the
responses are anonymous, and respondents are allowed to take as
much time as they want to complete the survey and be completely
honest about the answer without the fear of prejudice.
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Advantages
• – Ease of data collection – an online survey with
a hundred or more respondents can be
conducted fast.
• – Online surveys are easily accessible and can be
deployed via many online channels like web,
mobile, email, etc.
• – Low price compared to other methods
• – Easy to analyze and present with different Data
visualization types
• – A wide range of data types can be collected
such as attitudes, opinions, values, etc.
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Disadvantages
– Survey fraud. Answers may not be honest.
There are people who answer online surveys
just to receive a promised reward.
– Many questions might be left unanswered
and participants may not stay fully engaged to
the end.
– Without someone to explain, participants may
have different interpretations of your
questions.
– Cannot fully capture emotions and feelings.
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Focus group Method
• A focus group includes dialogue with a group of deliberately selected
participants who discuss a particular topic.
• Participants’ answers influence each other during the discussion. The
focus group is led by a person called a moderator.
• Focus group discussions (FGDs) are facilitated discussions, held with
a small group of people who have specialist knowledge or interest in
a particular topic.
• They are used to find out the perceptions and attitudes of a defined
group of people.
• FGDs are typically carried out with around 6-12
people, and are based around a short list of guiding questions,
designed to probe for in-depth information.
• FGDs are often used to solicit the views of those who would not be
willing or able to speak up at larger group meetings.
• They may also be used to access the views of minority or
disadvantaged groups, such as women, children or people with
disabilities.
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Advantages
– Focus Easy measure the reaction of customers to
your brand, products, or marketing campaigns.
– The moderator can ask questions to gain a
deeper understanding of the respondents’
emotions.
– The moderator can observe non-verbal
responses, such as body language or facial
expressions.
– Provide brainstorming opportunities and
participants can create new ideas.
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Disadvantages
– High costs – focus groups are much more
expensive compared to surveys.
– Moderator Bias. Moderators can have a
significant impact on the outcome of the
discussion.
– For sensitive topics, participants can not give
honest answers.
– The extrovert members can dominate the
conversation with a more aggressive approach to
giving feedback.
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Records And Documents Method
• This method involves extracting and analyzing
data from existing documents.
• The documents can be internal to an
organization (such as emails, sales reports,
records of customer feedback, activity logs,
purchase orders, etc.) or can be external (such
as Government reports).
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Advantages
• – Ease of data collection – the data already exists
and no additional effort is needed.
• – No need of searching and motivating
respondents to participate.
• – Allows you to track progress.
• Helps you understand the history behind an
event and track changes over a period of time.
• For example, you may want to find out why there
are lots of negative reviews from your customers
about your products. In this case, you can look at
recorded customers’ feedback
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Disadvantages
– Information may be out of date or
inapplicable.
– The process of evaluating documents and
records can be time-consuming.
– Can be an incomplete data collection method
because the researcher has less control over
the results.
– Some documents may be not publicly
available.
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Other Sources of Primary data
• Direct Measurement
• Photography and video
• Case studies
• Simulation
• stories of change
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Secondary Data Collection
• Secondary data is the data that have been already collected
for another purpose but has some relevance to your
current research needs.
• In other words, it has already been collected in the past by
someone else, not you. And now, you can use the data.
• Secondary data is second-hand information. It is not used
for the first time. That is why it is called secondary.
• Typically, secondary data is found in resources like the
Internet, libraries, or reports.
• Web information, business reports, mass media products,
encyclopedias, and government statistics are among the
most popular examples of secondary data.
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Types of Secondary Data
• There are two types of secondary data, based on
the data source:
• Internal sources of data: information gathered
within the researcher’s company or organization
(examples – a database with customer details,
sales reports, marketing analysis, your emails,
your social media profiles, etc).
• External sources of data: the data collected
outside the organization (i.e. government
statistics, mass media channels, newspapers, etc.)
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Internal Sources of Data
1. Sales data
Sales are essential to a company’s profitability.
Examples of sales data are revenue, profitability, price, distribution
channels, buyer personas, etc. This information can show you areas
of strength and weakness, which will drive your future decisions.
2. Finance data
Collecting and analyzing your financial data is a way to maximize
profits. Examples of financial data are overheads and production
costs, cash flow reports, amounts spent to manufacture products,
etc.
3. General marketing data
Marketing departments are a gold mine when it comes to secondary
data sources.
Examples of marketing data are reports on customer profiles, market
segmentation, level of customer satisfaction, level of brand
awareness, customer engagement through content marketing,
customer retention and loyalty, etc.
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4. Human resource data
Human resource departments have information about the costs to recruit and
train an employee, staff retention rate and churn, the productivity of an individual
employee, etc.
Human resource data can help you uncover the areas where a company needs to
improve its HR processes to empower staff skills, talent, and achievements.
5. Transport data: Companies that keep good records relating to their transport
operations are well placed to establish which are the most profitable routes, and
loads, as well as the most cost effective routing patterns.
Good data on transport operations enables the enterprise to perform trade-off
analysis and thereby establish whether it makes economic sense to own or hire
vehicles, or the point at which a balance of the two gives the best financial
outcome.
6. Storage data: The rate of stockturn, stockhandling costs, assessing the efficiency of
certain marketing operations and the efficiency of the marketing system as a
whole.
More sophisticated accounting systems assign costs to the cubic space occupied by
individual products and the time period over which the product occupies the
space.
These systems can be further refined so that the profitability per unit, and rate of
sale, are added. In this way, the direct product profitability can be calculated.
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7. Your social media profiles
Social Media profiles on networks like Facebook, Tweeter, Linkedin are a great
source of information that you can analyze to learn more about, for example,
how people are talking about your business and how users share and engage
with your content.
Some examples of secondary data that you can collect from social profiles
include: likes, shares, mentions, impressions, new followers, comments, URL
clicks.
8. Your website analytics
There’s a huge amount of valuable secondary data accessible to you through
your website analytics platform.
The most popular platform for insights into your website statistics is Google
Analytics and Google Search Console.
Examples of data that you can gather from your website include: visitor’s
location, patterns of visitor behavior, keywords used by visitors to find your
site and business, visitor’s activities in the site, most popular content, etc.
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9. Customer relationship management system (CRM software)
Businesses can also collect and analyze data within their own CRM system.
This system is a great source of secondary data such as clients’ company
affiliations, regional or geographical details for customers, and etc.
10. Emails
The average office employee sends dozens of business emails per day and
receives even more. Emails as sources of secondary data, provide
important information such as product reviews, opinions, feedback and so
on.
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External secondary data.
1. [Link] :[Link] provides over free 150,000 datasets available through
federal, state, and local governments. They are free, and accessible online.
Here, companies or students can find a ton of data, including information
related to consumers, education, manufacturing, public safety, and much
more.
2. World Bank Open Data :World Bank Open Data offer free and open access to
global development data. Datasets provide population demographics and a
vast number of economic indicators from across the world.
3. IMF Economic Data :The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an organization
of 189 countries. It provides data such as international financial statistics,
regional economic reports, foreign exchange rates, debt rates, commodity
prices, and investments.
4. Crayon Intel Free :Crayon Intel Free is one of the best free competitor analysis
tools that can help you track, analyze, and act on many things that happen
outside of your business.
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5. Talkwalker’s Free Social Search :Talkwalker’s Free Social Search is a real-time free
social media search engine that can provide you with unlimited searches across all
major social networks.
It allows you to find out what the internet is saying about you or your competitors in
seconds. You can know who’s talking about you with live audience insights.
[Link] :Feedly is a free news aggregator site that allows you to keep up with all the
topics that matter to you. All in one place.
With Feedly, you are able to monitor easily news about your products, your
competitors, important posts, content, Tweets or even YouTube videos.
7. Mailcharts :Mailcharts is a quite powerful tool for email marketers as well as for those
who want to spy on the competition.
It collects emails from competing campaigns to help you develop your own.
Mailhcharts has an enormous library of emails from countless brands.
8. Glassdoor:Glassdoor is one of the world’s largest and most popular job and recruiting
sites.
It provides a free database with millions of company reviews, CEO approval ratings,
interview reviews and questions, salary reports, benefits reviews, office photos, and
more.
9. Google Alerts:Google Alerts is one of the most popular free alert services that allows
you to follow mentions on the internet about practically anything you want –
company, brand, customers, purchasing patterns, and so on.
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10. HubSpot Marketing Statistics:HubSpot offers a large and very valuable free repository of
marketing data. You could find the latest marketing statistics and trends in areas such as
Organic Search, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), Ecomerce, Local SEO, Mobile Search,
and others.
11. Crunchbase :Crunchbase is one of the best and most innovative platforms for finding business
information about private and public companies. Crunchbase data include investments and
funding information, news, and industry trends, individuals in leadership positions, mergers,
and etc
12. Trade associations : Trade associations differ widely in the extent of their data collection and
information dissemination activities. However, it is worth checking with them to determine
what they do publish. At the very least one would normally expect that they would produce a
trade directory and, perhaps, a yearbook.
13. Commercial services : Published market research reports and other publications are available
from a wide range of organisations which charge for their information. Typically, marketing
people are interested in media statistics and consumer information which has been obtained
from large scale consumer or farmer panels. The commercial organisation funds the
collection of the data, which is wide ranging in its content, and hopes to make its money from
selling this data to interested parties.
14. National and international institutions : Bank economic reviews, university research reports,
journals and articles are all useful sources to contact. International agencies such as World
Bank, IMF, IFAD, UNDP, ITC, FAO and ILO produce a plethora of secondary data which can
prove extremely useful to the marketing researcher.
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Advantages of Secondary Data:
• Ease of access : The secondary data sources are very easy to access. The Internet has
changed the way secondary research works. Nowadays, you have so much information
available just by clicking with the mouse.
• Low cost or free :The majority of secondary sources are absolutely free for use or at very
low costs. It saves not only your money but your efforts. In comparison with primary
research where you have to design and conduct a whole primary study process from the
beginning, secondary research allows you to gather data without having to put any
money on the table.
• Time-saving :As the above advantage suggests, you can perform secondary research in
no time. Sometimes it is a matter of a few Google searches to find a source of data.
• Allow you to generate new insights from previous analysis: Reanalyzing old data can
bring unexpected new understandings and points of view or even new relevant
conclusions.
• Longitudinal analysis :Secondary data allows you to perform a longitudinal analysis
which means the studies are performed spanning over a large period of time. This can
help you to determine different trends. In addition, you can find secondary data from
many years back up to a couple of hours ago. It allows you to compare data over time.
• Anyone can collect the data : Secondary data research can be performed by people that
aren’t familiar with the different data collection methods. Practically, anyone can collect
it.
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Disadvantages:
• Might be not specific to your needs
Secondary data is not specific to the researcher’s needs due to the fact that it was
collected in the past for another reason. That is why the secondary data might be
unreliable for your current needs. Secondary data sources can give you a huge amount
of information, but quantity does not always mean appropriateness.
• You have no control over data quality
The secondary data might lack quality. The source of the information may be
questionable, especially when you gather the data via the Internet. As you relying on
secondary data for your data-driven decision-making, you must evaluate the reliability
of the information by finding out how the information was collected and analyzed.
• Biasness
As the secondary data is collected by someone else than you, typically the data is
biased in favor of the person who gathered it. This might not cover your requirements
as a researcher or marketer.
• Not timely
Secondary data is collected in the past which means it might be out-of-date. This issue
can be crucial in many different situations.
• You are not the owner of the information
Generally, secondary data is not collected specifically for your company. Instead, it is
available to many companies and people either for free or for a little fee. So, this is not
exactly a “competitive advantage” for you. Your current and potential competitors also
have access to the data.
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