Well, that might seem like an awfully boring title, but when we talked about it in class it fascinated me. I never even deeply thought about the fact that there are two main types of data; primary and secondary, although I’m sure I have been the subject of both.

Lets quickly review what these are. Primary data is data that has been created by yourself, or your company. It is carried out through paper survey’s, online survey’s, social media, telephone etc. By collecting this data we then come up with results that help us analyze customer behavior and most importantly come up with a research plan. A good example used in our textbook was Red Bull – and how they wanted to add a line of enhanced water to its already extremely successful line of energy drinks! I mean, I personally never even use the world “energy drink” anymore, I just say Red Bull because that’s how its been placed in my mind. This reminds me of how my mother used to always refer to tissue’s as “Kleenex” – and well that I adapted at an early age also. Regardless, I feel that Primary data can be almost revolutionary for companies in that they discover things they have never seen before. Results like these could never be attained through secondary data – because most of the time the data we need can’t even be found in secondary data.

So what is secondary data? Its basically the data that has been created by others. Its easily accessible in databases such as Statistics Canada (www.statcan.gc.ca), very cost effective and pretty easy to use. I feel that in some cases, secondary data can be great – especially for smaller companies starting out that need some statistics in order to properly market their product, yet I believe if one truly wants to market its product and go above and beyond, they should take Kimber-Clark’s Huggies brand as an example, where parents wore camera-equipped glasses at home so that they could see what the consumer saw while changing babies diapers.

If you truly want to fall in love with huggies and their marketing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpZH7L-9rRE