External secondary data are obtained outside the company. Because of the volume of external data available, researchers need a data search plan to locate and extract the right data. A simple guideline to follow is: define goals the secondary data need to achieve; specify objectives behind the secondary search process; define specific characteristics of data that are to be extracted; document all activities necessary to find, locate, and extract the data sources; focus on reliable sources of data; and tabulate all the data extracted. The most common source of external secondary data are popular, scholarly, government, and commercial.