Editor's note: Robert D. Aaron' is president and co-founder of Aaron/Smith Associates, Inc., an Atlanta-based research and information services firm.

Many market researchers are being asked by their clients to provide more than just the results of a survey or focus group. They want to put the results in context. They want information on competitors. They want to see if other information corroborates or contradicts their own findings. In fact, they want all sorts of complementary information.

So in addition to constructing questionnaires and analyzing the numbers, market researchers need to be able to add value to their own results by including information that originates from outside their organization.

This kind of research used to involve painful and time-consuming library work. But now, with the proliferation of personal computers and on-line data-bases, it is relatively easy to enhance primary research with secondary research without ever leaving your desk. Integrating secondary and primary research allows the market researcher to provide a much broader and higher quality product that meets more of the information user's needs.

An effective literature search will raise the cost of a market research project by only a few percentage points (a typical search costs under $100 if you do it yourself and if you know what you're doing, within reason). But it can raise the quality of your report by several orders of magnitude. The more information, the more angles; the more angles, the more complete your report will be; the more complete your report is, the happier your client will be. Literature searching is an investment in your final product and in your long-term client relationships.

Why bother with secondary research?

Secondary research (which means looking up information that already exists) can add a lot of value to your primary market research. Now, since the information explosion has made most of the indexes and reference works that reside in libraries available on computer, you can obtain much more usable information if you find items in other publications to incorporate into your report. It's worth the effort. For example:

Do Your Homework.
Many researchers, when they take on a new client, have to learn about an industry and its issues. This is very effectively done by a quick literature search to find articles discussing the very issues you plan to research. With this information you can go to your client with your own independent understanding of the problem, not just the one they give you.

Help Design Your Questions.
The issues that come up in the published literature are often the same kinds of issues that you will be asking questions about. Many researchers have found that they can develop a much more effective questionnaire with the help of a literature search.

Put Your Numbers In Context.
Your results may be similar to those obtained by others who have reported their findings in publications or press releases. Or they may tee different. Or the inferences you draw (such as on market share) may be at odds with other published information. Due diligence would seem to indicate that it is worth your while to check.

Adding information to your report will add value. External information provides a context for your results. Even if it is information that is already known to your client, it is often very useful to summarize a few well-known sources before launching into a discussion of your own findings. It provides a starting place, it lends credibility-and it impresses people!

Getting started with secondary information

So how does one get started? Learning how to do literature searches is not difficult, but you don't want to try to learn how to do everything at once. Secondary research is mostly a matter of experience, of having looked for X and finding it in source C after having tried sources A and B. That's the only way anyone ever gets good at doing secondary research.

Doing literature searching using online databases adds another component to this experience-one has to understand the commands needed to get the computer to spit out the information you need. The typical databases that index market research literature, and there are several, are text-based systems that ask you to provide one or more key words in order to find those articles or references that contain those key words.

Most on-line searches can be conducted with no more than five commands: the command to start the system (and to enter your password), the command to start up the database you want, the command to find the terms you want, the command to display or print the results, and the command to exit the system. Other commands, like those that will sort the results or that will format them in some specialized way, can be used after you feel comfortable with the basic commands.

A cautionary note. Be prepared to spend some time, effort, and money reaming how to use on-line databases. You have to spend some time immersed in the systems if they are going to make sense to you. You have to see what the information looks like and how different databases provide different pieces of the puzzle. And you have to try to answer a few real questions before it will really sink in. Remember that reaming how to use on-line systems proficiently requires the kind of investment in time and energy that you would put into reaming a new spreadsheet program.

But if you're ready to take the plunge, there are numerous on-line vendors who would be more than happy to sell you access. The two we recommend to most general business researchers are Dialog and NewsNet. Your specialized needs may take you to other systems, but we have found that these two can be used by most people very effectively. And they both have excellent customer service desks with 800 numbers for those times when you need help.

Dialog is a veritable shopping center of databases, with hundreds to choose from covering most disciplines. One of the oldest and largest on-line vendor systems (by which is meant a host system that gets its databases from other publishers), Dialog contains virtually all of the major marketing-related databases. Representative databases on Dialog of interest to market researchers include the Predicasts files such as PROMT (PRedicasts Overview of Markets and Technology), MARS (Marketing and Advertising Research Service), ABI/Inform, Donnelley Demographics, CENDATA (containing the official 1990 Census results from the Census Bureau), INVESTEXT for securities analysts' reports, many full-text newspapers, press release databases, and numerous other sources as well. You will need to spend some time reaming how to search Dialog, but it provides both a powerful and complex professional searcher command structure and a simplified menu-driven command structure for the occasional searcher.

NewsNet offers many wire services in real-time, but its strength is its array of specialized newsletters. Examples include American Marketplace (covering new Census reports), Affluent Markets Alert, Marketing Research Review, Research Alert (covering consumer trends)...you get the picture. Many industry-specific newsletters are here as well, and all in full text. In fairness, a large number of these newsletters and wire services are also available on Dialog as well, but many occasional users of on-line services like NewsNet's easier commands.

If you are going to get access to only one system to support market research, we would recommend Dialog. It's the most comprehensive, one of the most cost-effective, and it is growing at a phenomenal rate. If you're going to get two systems, we recommend adding NewsNet. We don't recommend getting more than two unless you are going to devote a staff person to being responsible for knowing what's in the systems and how they work.

Also, it is often advisable to get the help of on-line search professionals. If the question you have is outside your normal day-to-day area, if it's hard to pin down, if you're not sure where to begin, or if you don't have the time, seek out your company's librarian or an independent searcher such as an information broker to assist you or to do it for you. They can wrestle with the computer while you get the information you need.

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Basic rules of on-line searching

There are a few basic rules to using on-line databases as research tools that everyone who searches intermittently should keep in mind:

Know what you're doing.
Understand your problem, and keep it in mind as you search. The answer you find may not be the answer you were expecting, so be alert to the unexpected results you may unearth.

Limit what you do.
Don't try to look everywhere for everything. Try to find a few key points in the most appropriate databases.

Be ready to get out.
If you aren't finding what you want fairly quickly, don't waste time and money on a fishing expedition. Get out and think about your search. Also, remember that many specific subjects have very little written about them. Our rule of thumb is that the smaller the amount of money involved in a market, the less is written about it.

Be ready to improvise.
When your first search term turns up no results (or, possibly worse, when it turns up thousands of articles), be prepared to execute Plan B... whatever that is. You can't know what you will find on a given question until you look, and it may not be at all what you expected. Write out your search beforehand, but be ready to try new terms at any moment.

Use what worked before.
Database developers are a fairly consistent lot. If they indexed a relevant article under a specific heading (usually given at the bottom of the database entry), odds are that heading would also retrieve other relevant articles. Use it.

Be prepared to spend money.
On-line systems can be expensive, especially after you've spent into the three figures with very little to show for it. Have a budget in mind both for time and for the out-of-pocket expenses.

If you need to, get professional help.
Librarians, information brokers, and others can provide you with invaluable assistance when you get stuck or confused. They can recommend other sources, suggest changes to your search strategy, or do the search for you. And asking for help when searching on-line is not an admission of failure.