For an instructive overview of what industry professionals see as challenges today, it is worth reviewing the 2009 Research Industry Trends report here.

Page 25 is the key page.

Here are the top 2 box responses (“a little problematic” and “a major problem”):

86% price or budget issues from current economy
73% research treated as a commodity
70% client demands for shorter timelines
68% surveys that are too long (and presumably reduce the pool of potential respondents)
63% non-research managers doing their own surveys (DIY)
53% “professional respondents”
45% Reduction in demand due to belief that data can be found online (free)
44% Procurement departments treated researh as a hard good
43% Difficulty in acquiring needed survey sample
42% Price pressure from offshore operators
40% Difficulty finding qualified staff
31% Demands for more visually appealing reports
27% Less interest in consulting, more interest in raw data (commodity)
23% More time needed to train employees
21% Research reports with a greater number of errors

The economic challenges (86%) are not a surprise, given the financial meltdown of 2008, and many of these are challenges that most professionals in this industry are discussing.

What is instructive is their ordering.

The fear of commoditzation clearly rises to the top (73%), and ties in with procurement departments treating research as a hard good (44%), offshore price pressure (42%) and less demand for consulting services (27%).

Of course, DIY (“non-research managers doing their own surveys on the internet” and “reduction in demand for primary research because non-research managers learn what they need from the web.”) is a clear reflection of a feeling (among some) that research is more of a commodity, than a business consulting service.

Speed is also a critical issue. Customers are clearly demanding faster delivery and shorter timelines (70%). This is related closely to something we’ve been discussing here at future of insight, which is globally distributed research teams that work the global (24-7) clock.