1. Primary Research
Primary Research is the process of gathering
information directly from individuals who have
access to it. Unlike secondary research, primary
research does not focus on published information.
Primary research sources could include competitor
employees and former employees, competitor
vendors and suppliers, competitor clients and
customers, etc.While primary research can address questions
about past and current activity, the goal is to learn
about what the competitor is going to do; 'what are
the intentions and plans of the company?' This is
the reason why Primary Research Competitive
Intelligence is the only way to really know what
your competitor, and therefore the market, is going
to do next.

2. Secondary Research
Secondary research is a method of collecting data that
has already been gathered by some one else. It is a
technique used when performing marketing research. It is
a useful method as it allows the researcher to identify a
new topic rather than one that has exhaustively been
researched.In most cases this means finding information from third-party
sources such as marketing research reports, company
websites, magazine articles, and other sources. But in
actuality any information previously gathered, whether from
sources external to the marketer or from internal sources,
such as accessing material from previous market research
carried out by the marketer’s organization, old sales reports,
accounting records and many others, falls under the heading
of secondary research.