In the chapter Exploratory Research design secondary and syndicated data, we learn about primary

data which is generated by the researcher for addressing the problem at hand. The collection of data
involves the following 6 steps : problem definition, development of an approach to the problem,
research design formulation, fieldwork or data collection ,data preparation and analysis and report
preparation and presentation. On the other hand, secondary data is the data collected for some
purpose and not for the problem at hand. Secondary data are easily accessible, cheap and is gathered
quickly helping in a way to identify and better define a problem, develop an approach to the problem,
formulate an appropriate research design, answer certain questions with the help of hypothesis
testing and interpret primary data more insightfully. The analysis of secondary data is an essential
prerequisite to the collection of primary data. The disadvantage of secondary data is its limited
usefulness in area like relevance and accuracy as the objectives, nature and methods used to collect
the data may not be correct.

Criteria of evaluating secondary data are :Specifications that is the methodology used to collect the
data(includes size and nature of the sample, response rate and quality, questionnaire design and
administration, fieldwork procedure, data analysis and reporting procedures),Error (whether the data
is accurate in terms of approach, research design, sampling, data collection, data analysis and
reporting),currency(may not be current and the time lag between data collection and publishing may
be long),objective(purpose of data collection),nature(the content of data in terms of key variables,
measurement unit, categories and relationship).The objective of setting the criteria is that data must
be reliable, relevance ,valid and generic, refiguring the data and acquiring the data from the original
rather than as acquired source.

Secondary data can be classified into internal and external data. Internal data is the data present in
the organization for which the research is taking place in the form of ready-to-use format. External
data is the data which is generated outside the organization in the form of business/non-government
and social media. Social is the source of both internal and external data. The different other sources
of internal data are customer databases (transfer of raw sales information involving quantified
psychological profiles),Data warehouse(centralized database to consolidate data) ,Data mining(use of
statistical tools to analyze large database),CRM(used for managing customer interaction) and
Database Marketing(software to track consumer profiles and purchase detail).

External secondary data is classified into business/nongovernment data(covers non-profit

organizations, for-profit firms and information from sales leads, mailing lists, business profiles, credit
ratings and bibliographic),government data that covers census data and other government sources .
Another type of data is syndicated source of secondary data which is an information service that
provides information from a common database to different firms that have subscribed to the service.

Syndicated services are classified based on the units of measurement that consumer /household