Discuss single-source data. What is it and how is it related to computer mapping?

What will be an ideal response?

It is desirable to combine secondary information obtained from different sources. One outcome of the effort to combine data from different sources is single-source data. Combining data allows the researcher to compensate for the weakness of one method with the strengths of another. Single-source research follows a person's TV, reading, and shopping habits. After recruiting a test panel of households, the research firm meters each home's TV sets and surveys family members periodically on what they read. Their grocery purchases are tracked by UPC scanners. For background, most systems also track retail data, such as sales, advertising, and promotion. Thus, single-source data provide integrated information on household variables, including media consumption and purchases, and marketing variables such as product sales, price, advertising, promotion, and in-store marketing effort.

Computer mapping is related to single-source data because they both combine secondary data from different sources. Computer mapping combines geography with demographic information and a company's sales data or other proprietary information to develop thematic maps. Marketers now routinely make decisions based on these color-coded maps.