Secondary data may be either in the published or unpublished form. The nature of the sources of the published data is quite different from the unpublished data.
However, the different sources of the published and unpublished data are presented here as under:
(i) Published Sources:
The sources of the published secondary data can be broadly classified into the following types:
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1. Reports and Official Publications of International Organisations:
These include United Nation Organisation’ (UNO), World Health Organisation (WHO), International Labour Organisation (ILO), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB), Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific (ESCAP), International Finance Commission (IFC) and International statistical Education Institute (ISEI).
The main publications of the above mentioned institutes which provide valuable informations on a variety of important economic and current topics include the following:
(a) UNO Statistical Year Book,
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(b) UNO Statistical Abstract,
(c) Demographic Year Book, and
(d) Annual Reports.
2. Reports and Official Publication of Central and State Governments:
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These include Statistical Abstracts of India (Annual), Economic Survey of India, National Income Statistics, Labour Gazette, Indian Trade Journal, Agricultural Statistics of India, Annual Survey of Industries, Monthly Abstracts of Statistics, Census Report and Indian Population Bulletin.
3. Reports of the Adhoc Committees and Commissions:
These include Committees and Commissions appointed by the Government such as Sarkaria Committee, Tandon Committee, Mehrotra Committee, Shah Commission, Pay Commission, etc.
4. Reports and Official Publications of the Semi-Government Organisation:
The main publications of the semi-government organisations and local authorities include Annual Reports of the Banks, Currency and Finance, Reserve Bank of India Bulletin (Monthly), Vital Statistics of the local authorities, etc.
5. Reports and Publications of Autonomous and Private Institutes:
These include the followings:
(a) Trade and Professional Bodies, such as, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the Institute of Chartered Accountants, the Institute of Foreign Trade. The main journals of these institutes are respectively ‘Economic Trends’, ‘The Chartered Accountant’ and ‘Foreign Trade Review’
(b) Financial had economic journals such as ‘Indian Economic Review’, ‘Reserve Bank of India Bulletin’, ‘Indian Finance’, etc.
(c) Annual Reports of Joint Stock Companies and Corporations.
(d) Publications brought out by various autonomous Research Institutes and Scholars such as Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi; National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi; Institute of politics and Economics, Oune; the Institute of Labour Research, Mumbai; etc.
(ii) Unpublished Sources:
There are various sources of the unpublished secondary data. However, some of these
Sources are mentioned as under:
(a) Records maintained by private business houses.
(b) Unpublished Ph.D. thesis.
(c) Confidential records maintained by various departments of governments and other organisations.
(d) Administrative records relating to internal activities of an organisation viz., cost records, final accounts, progress reports, recruitment and promotion rules of employees, performance records and operational records.
(b) Major Research Agencies Engaged in Syndicated Research in India.
(1) ORG (Operations Research Group):
ORG was established in 1960 and was the first to introduce the concept of syndicated research in India. ORG evaluates, monitors and analyses consumer, trade, community and organisational level behaviour and practices.
The syndicated services offered by ORG include:
(i) Retail Audits:
To monitor the market on a regular basis for various product categories, through a panel of retail outlets.
(ii) Consumer Products Audit:
This audit provides data pertaining to over 50 categories of branded packaged consumer goods, ranging from personal care products, food and medicines (including OTC drugs).
(iii) Pharmaceutical Audit:
National Estimates of retail-purchases of pharmaceutical formulations obtained from All-India representative sample of retail chemist outlets.
(iv) Prescription Audit:
Quarterly data obtained from a representative sample of various categories of doctors regarding the cases attended by them in a specified period.
(v) Advertising Audits:
Monitoring of advertisements released through the print & TV media, on all an ongoing basis to provide information on competitive advertising.
(2) NCEAR (National Council of Applied Economic Research):
This is a Non-profit, non-funded premier research institute specialising in the field of applied economics. It conducts a comprehensive server the annual Market Information Survey of Households (MISH) on the market for a number of durables and consumer goods.
Since the information provided in the survey are inclusive of the income level of the households, size of households, occupation age and education level of the head of the household etc., such demographic information will be useful for marketers to plan and execute various marketing strategies for consumer goods.
(3) Path Finder’s India:
This is a research agency set up by leading ad. Agency lint as a noted syndicated research survey on Indian housewife, termed as national market monitor had been undertaken by the path finders.
(4) IMRB (Indian Market Research Bureau):
IMRB as carried out many media studies and market, measurement as a part of the syndicated research services, they include:
(a) National Readership Survey (NRS):
The main objective of the national readership survey is to provide advertisers, advertising agencies and publishers with information on their efficient use of the press and also to assess other media such a cinema, radio and TV. NRS is conducted once in four or five years. NRS-I was conducted by ORG in 1970, NRS-II was jointly conducted by ORG and IMRB, NRS-III was conducted by IMRB (1983-84) and NRS-IV was jointly conducted by IMRB and media research (media research division of MARG) the NRS-IV covered a sample of 73,695 households in 590 towns all over India, thereby making it one of the biggest exercises of this kind in the world.
(b) Businessmen Readership Survey (BRS):
It is a specialist readership survey carried out by IMRB and figures on the readership habits of over 1.3 million Indian business men, company executives, professionals and governments officials. BRS was conducted with a sample of around 8,800 detailed interviews spread over 12 metro cities in the country, the BRS provides readership and profile data for 130 publications.
(c) Television Rating Points System (TRP):
TRP is a continuous television measurement system, to estimate the audience size for the TV medium as a whole Vl hole as well as for specific programmes and time slots, more specifically it is a panel based system and covers around 3,124 households in nine cities spread across the country, it gives information on viewership figures, duplication between programmes, frequency of watching individual programmes and cumulative reach over successive telecast of the same programme.
(d) Market Pulse-Household Purchase Survey:
This is a panel survey continuously monitoring service on 22 household products, it monitors the purchases made by 1,000 households in Mumbai, Delhi Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad through housewives who maintain purchase diaries, IMRB uses these findings to monitor the performance of a new brand predict brand share, measure magnitude of brand shifts and to assess the impact of promotional efforts.
(e) Personal Product Purchase Panels:
These panels comprise of men and the study is to collect information regarding buying habits for products such as tobacco products, blades, etc., monthly reports are published.
(f) The Cold Beverage Barometer:
This study is carried out in peak summer is about seven cities, covering a sample of over 7,000 to enable strategic and tactical market planning about beverages (aerated and non-aerated), squashes ,soft drink concentrates,’ soda and homemade cold beverages.