Christine Zhang's Blog

I’m not going to lie… After years of schooling, I abhor the acts of collecting data, understanding data and even the word data itself. After our last class, although still disliking data, I have come to form a slight appreciation for data and the various facets of it. I never knew that there were actually two types of data:

Primary Data is data that has been created by yourself, or your company and is carried out through paper survey’s, online survey’s, social media etc. Through the data, companies come up with results that help them analyze customer behaviour and come up with a research plan.

Secondary Data is data that has been created by others and will then often be compiled into large databases, such as Statistics Canada (www.statcan.gc.ca). As a student, I would much rather pay some small fees to a large database and gather as much secondary data as fast as I could than have to take the time, effort and money to gather my own primary data. However, I looked through the Marketing Recommended Reading List and found this interesting web site :

http://www.trendwatching.com/.

This website has hundreds of people in over 120 countries look out for potential new trends, compiles the information seen, and then presents and sells them to CEO’s and large corporations and any business man who wants to launch a new idea/trend. This website collects primary data and then sells it through their website as secondary data, and yet, this website’s data is not substantial or guaranteed because trends are something that are predicted and depends on biased views. Most people want to buy secondary data that is 100% accurate and unbiased, but this data is not either and still probably sells amazingly! I thought this website was brilliant, and thoroughly enjoyed going through it.