Two types of research exist; secondary and primary. Both must be used in order for a company to satisfy the previous objectives. Secondary research must be in terms of collecting / gathering all the necessary information that is already published. These data, that can become the company's database, acting as the first step of the research in order to perform the situation analysis, identify its competitors, perform a benchmarking strategy, and define those segments that wants to target, in terms of population, usage rate, demographics, behavioral patterns and lifestyle.

Directly related to the information gathered by the secondary research, next a primary one must occur. With the use of primary research-information that is not currently available, a company's management team will be able to understand better the potential customers needs and target those that are not adequately served by the existing practices. Also, primary research will monitor the sales increase of the company, follow with the competitors' plans, and measure effectiveness of the business practices, such as quality of services offered, or communication tools used by the company.

Moreover, marketing experts refer to two major categories of data collection methods. These are divided into quantitative and qualitative methods. Named as quantitative, are studies that use mathematical analysis that can reveal statistically significant differences. On the other hand, qualitative research is a method that the researched data are not subject to quantification or quantitative analysis.