• What proportion of customers believes the level of customer service provided by the business is rated good or excellent?
  
  
• What do customers think of a new version of a popular product?
  
  
• Who will be the next prime minister?

• Face-to-face interviews (F2F) or In-depth interviews (IDIs). In this method interviewers ask people questions at their home, office or a central location either using structured or semi-structured questionnaires or discussion guides. NOTE: F2F yields the highest quality of information, but is more time consuming and expensive
  
  
• Telephone interviews are similar to face-to-face interviews, although often shorter. They yield a good quality of information and are more time-efficient as well as less expensive
  
  
• Online / Web surveys using email or the Internet. This is an increasingly popular way of obtaining primary data and costs less than face-to-face or telephone interviews.
  
  
• Questionnaires. These are sent in the post (for example, a customer feedback form sent to people who have recently bought a product or service).
  
  
• Focus groups and consumer panels. This is where a small group of people meet together with a "facilitator" who asks the panel to examine a product and then asks in-depth questions about the product. This method is often used when a business is planning to introduce a new product or brand name.
  
  
• In most cases it is not possible to ask all existing or potential customers the questions that the business wants answered. Therefore, primary research makes use of surveys and sampling to obtain valid results.

• They provide up-to-date information and insights
  
  
• The research is specific to the purpose. The questions the business wants answers to are asked.
  
  
• Provision of unbiased information; data is collected by a third party anonymously.
  
  
• Data is collected which no other business will have access to (the results are confidential).
  
  
• In the case of online surveys and telephone interviews, the data can be obtained quite quickly (For example, consider how quickly political opinion polls come out).

The main disadvantages of primary research are that it:

• Can be difficult to collect and/or take a long time to collect.
  
  
• Is expensive to collect.
  
  
• May provide misleading results if the sample is not large enough or chosen with care or if the questions in the questionnaire are not worded properly.

At a high level there are two types of marketing research and marketing problems: 1. )Emotional (Qualitative) and 2.) Rational (Quantitative) . These are used in different ways to address different kinds of marketing problems. Both types are important and produce valuable insight when they are matched with the right kind of problem.

Emotional (Qualitative)
This is a consumer centric market research that focuses on developing a deeper and broader understanding of consumers. This work tends to focus on questions that are more relevant to strategic issues such as consumer insights into brands, images, and communication materials such as advertisements.