What is secondary research?

Secondary research (or desk research) is the analysis of information that already exists: industry reports, government statistics, competitor websites and pricing pages, review platforms, news coverage, and academic studies. It is faster and cheaper than primary research, though the data was collected for someone else’s purpose.

Most competitive intelligence is secondary research — competitor pricing, features, reviews, and rankings are all public. The craft is in collecting it systematically and keeping it current, which is exactly what monitoring tools automate.