Tourism New Zealand‘s decision to use the same research approach of secondary research and online surveys in each key market 

 

Information is the key element in developing successful global marketing strategies.

 

STANDARDIZATION VS ADOPTION:

 

By reviewing different pros and cons points of view about the challenges and benefits of the primary and secondary research methods it can be said that there is a common confusion about the use of the terms ‘primary data’ and ‘secondary. However, the analysis of existing data is a cost-efficient way to make full use of data that are already collected to address potentially important new research questions or to provide an assessment of the primary results from the original study.

There are several publically available secondary data from China’s government and other private sources which almost all of them are without any costs, and Tourism New Zealand is conducting these secondary research well and by using different awareness campaigns they apply the knowledge to benefit as an example we can refer to ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ which is one of New Zealand’s awareness campaigns and  indicates that active considerers believe that New Zealand has a natural beauty and tourist attractions, and it seems that Tourism New Zealand have successfully use them to accomplish its tourism goals which is to attract more tourists to the country and catch them to stay longer and spend more money during their stay. (tourismnewzealand.com2012). Additionally Tourism New Zealand and market research company TNS identified ‘Active considerers’ as the segment holding the most likely as future visitors who consider New Zealand as their travel destination which is the key focus of Tourism New Zealand and that is to change the active considerers to the potential visitors.

 

In case of online research Tourism New Zealand is using the different existing travel websites and weblogs such as TripAdvisor.com in which almost 68% of tourists believe other’s recommendation and travel diaries. Based on the research, Tourism New Zealand shifted its marketing communications from traditional to targeted, with almost 80% of budget spent for China on digital channels to support the global digital marketing strategy(tourismnewzealand.com 2012) and the tourism New Zealand consumer website (www.newzealand.com) Also according to the case study Tourism New Zealand discovered that almost a large number of travel research done before travel to the country such as online booking and other traveler’s recommendation and as mentioned before due to “100% Pure New Zealand’ campaign Tourism New Zealand successfully targeted a young demographic of Chinese tourists who prefer combining urban ,nature and cultural activities to the country.

 

Advantages

 The first advantage of using secondary data (SD) has always been the saving of time (Ghauri, 2005). As the limitless sources of information in the so called Internet Era is available with almost a very lower cost compare to the primary research approach and of course many of European and American countries are using the same secondary approach for their tourism purposes in the past, and they were successful. New Zealand in this case performed similar to those European and American Countries. The process of research has been simplified and detailed information may be obtained via websites and search engines. (Ghauri 2005). Generating new insights from previous analyses and reanalyzing data can also lead to unanticipated new findings. (Fàbregues, 2013).

 

In a nutshell tourism New Zealand was relatively successful in using the secondary research approach so far, although there are still different types of difficulties and also risks to use the existing data and information such as Inappropriateness of the data and Lack of control over data quality (Saunders, 2009) but conducting marketing campaigns for attracting tourist to New Zealand based on the secondary research method brought millions of dollars to New Zealand’ economy, and this is happening only by leveraging the same secondary research approach.