It is time for us to locate what is called "secondary data". You use secondary data all the time. When you look for content on the web, such as a webpage, post or social media site, you are reading what others are saying about a topic.
But how do I know that I can trust the opinion of others?
I can trust information that I find if I know it comes from a reputable source. In business, secondary data is what others are saying or writing about the company, the market or the product based on facts and research.
Note: The following video helps demonstrates the concepts found in the narrative located on this page.
Watch the video on the page or use this link - Secondary Research.
Provides the latest business and financial information, including business conditions, management techniques, business trends, and management practice and theory, as well as full text access to the Wall Street Journal back to 1984.
ABInform (Abstracts in Business Information) provides access to business news, reports, research studies and other articles on topics in the business field. To locate content you can search by a company name, an industry, a product or just a word term or other topic. Materials found here include all sorts of content.
Click the link and try this search: Tesla and Market* - notice that we used the term Tesla since it is a unique name of a company or product. I then added the term Market*.
Here is a short list of what I found with the Tesla and Market* search
There is a lot! I limited to Scholarly Journals and found some very current narrative. Scholarly journals provide access to research, quality citations and long narratives.
Click on the article image to see the complete article. The cite button will provide you with an APA citation to this article. This article is one of the best in the group. Take a look. It is from a good journal source, it is current and provides a great deal of content.
Need more?
The asterisk works well but you should also try "quote marks". Here is a new search. It is looking for content on the market share that Tesla enjoys since I want to find more data about that topic.
So try this search: Tesla and "market share"
The quote marks make the source look for the words but only when they occur side by side.
So here are those search results.
Congratulations, you have collected data on what others are saying about your company or industry - secondary research.
As researchers we have to tell others (readers - professors) where we found information that we use in our papers, presentations, poster or even business presentations.
Here is the citation to the article on Tesla and market share: It follows a very simple pattern.
Authors. (date). Article title. Journal Name, Volume(issue), page numbers. http://doi
Journal article example:
Musonera, E. & Cagle, C. (2019). Electric car brand positioning in the automotive industry: Recommendations for sustainable and innovative marketing strategies. Journal of Strategic Innovation and Sustainability, 14(1), 120–133. https://doi:10.33423/jsis.v14i1.991
Browsing a research article:
Articles are usually divided into sections.
What do I pay attention to when I am reading?
Looking for more? Newspapers are a great source for company and company marketing data.