The Research Industry Trends (RIT) Report is coming soon, and it promises to be quite revealing. Tom Anderson promos the RIT a bit over at Next Gen Market Research. It’s worth a look. The top two concerns are: 1. The non-representative nature of online samples 2. Quality of online sample is worse than most believe [...]

Will 50% of the work being done at market research firms today become “unnecessary” in three years? Marshall Toplansky, President of WiseWindow, explores this question and scans the horizon of market research in a new MRA Alert article. For those MRA members, I highly recommend reading Toplansky’s article titled “Measuring the Future of Market Research.” [...]

Recently Alastair Gordon has asked “who’ll own MR in 2020?” By this Gordon means to ask which players will dominate the market research industry. His thesis is that the answer changes based on the year, but that one probable future is the rise, and ultimate dominance of the sub-contracting firms upon which full-service shops often [...]

Does the term “market research” accurately capture what the industry is doing today? Is the term advantageous for the industry? I have written about this before as what I describe as the “linguistic” challenge to the industry. This is why it was so good to read Andrew Jeavons’ piece in the February edition of Research [...]

Ian Lewis has an exceptionally good piece in March’s Research World. Ideally, it should be read in tandem with his January Quirk’s piece titled “Ten keys to increasing the impact of research” and with his comments on this website. Although I highly recommend that you read (and re-read) Ian’s piece in Research World and draw [...]

Is what we currently think of as the market research industry building the future of its business, or is innovation more likely to come from outside the traditional players? I’m inclined to believe that major innovation will not come from the large players and will come mostly from outside what we think of today as [...]

Tom Ewing has an update to his thinking regarding Millennials in MR. There was such a great response to his question (Are the kids alright?) that he revised and extended his remarks. It is worth reading the comments. I maintain that there is plenty of young talent in the industry, but that these talented folks [...]

It is not difficult to see how prediction markets could become another useful tool in the market researcher’s toolkit. For those interested in prediction markets I strongly recommend David Rothschild’s article in this month’s Public Opinion Quarterly (AAPOR’s publication). Although Rothschild’s article focuses on “comparing prediction markets, polls and their biases”, the implications of his [...]

When I asked a good friend in the research industry to give me a one word prediction for 2010, he sent me a clip of Mr. T saying “pain”. That wouldn’t be my first word choice, but to get a sense of what leaders in the industry are thinking, you can check out their one [...]

Ian Lewis’ “A Road Map to Increased Relevance” in this month’s edition of Quirk’s is a nice complement to the November BCG study and the Research Industry Trends report. By reading these three one gets a well rounded picture of the industry today and a glimpse at the industry in the future. Of course, the [...]