Methods of primary research
Questionnaires- detailed information gathered, customers' opinions about the product or service, carried out online, encourage people to fill in questionnaire, vouchers can be offered or entered into a 'prize draw'. If questions are not well thought out, the answers to them will not be very accurate, carrying out questionnaires take alot of time and money, collating and analysing the results is also time-consuming.
Online surveys- fast with quicker responses, cheaper than interviews, easy to complete, data collected can be quick analysed. Absence of interviewer to explain open-ended questions, cannot reach potential respondents who do not have access to the internet.
Interviews- interviewer is able to explain any questions that the interviewee does not understand, detailed information can be gathered. Interviewer could lead the interviewee into answering in a certain way resulting in interviewer bias, interviews are time consuming to carry out and expensive.
Focus groups- provide detained information about customers' tastes and preferences, interaction between members in the group help business understand reasons for people's opinions, quicker and cheaper. Time consuming, discussion could be biased if some people on the panel are influenced by the opinions of others, dominated by just a few people so the researcher will need to be experienced to deal with this.