What are the Various Types of Marketing Research?

All marketing research falls into two basic categories: secondary and
primary. Secondary research involves literature searches, article reviews
and analysis of existing, available data. While secondary research is
limited to the information you have on hand, it is usually much cheaper
than primary research and can be done by small businesses themselves.

     There are two general types of primary research. Qualitative research
is used for developing new ideas or to get a "gut feeling" for a given
subject or problem. Quantitative research primarily involves surveys based
on representative samples where data is collected using mail, telephone or
personal interviews. Results from quantitative studies can be projected to
entire populations and therefore used in predicting.