Research World 47 September

Encouraging, advancing and elevating market research worldwide No 47 | September 2014
1
RISE OF THE MACHINES Turning the corner
A brightening outlook
New revenue streams
New horizons
RESEARCH WORLD I 47 | S b 2014
7

Published by
4 RESEARCH WORLD | September 2014
Encouraging, advancing and elevating market research, worldwide.
REguLARS FEATuRES
6
EdiToRial
A whole new world
83
RW ConnECT
Big data and the future of
qualitative research
83
dR. PETE
The walk-in clinic for research ailments
85
MEdia SCan
Driving brand advertising into online
channels
86
MaRKETinG CaSE HiSToRY
How changing consumer behaviour may
challenge traditional marketing research
88
ESoMaR lounGE
90
ESoMaR CalEndaR
26 RESEARCH CHALLENgE
ThE NEw Look of
ANALyTiCS
As we’re sparring, my kickboxing trainer
asks me the same question in every
session: “Where are you looking?”
38 RESEARCH IN BuSINESS
ThE fUTURE of MARkET
RESEARCh
Full-service-self-serve research
60 gLOBAL MARKET RESEARCH
MoDEST GRowTh foR
woRLD’S LARGEST
RESEARCh fiRMS
The world’s largest 25 marketing research
firms experienced modest revenue growth
in 2013, driven by syndicated services firms
and held in check by changing currency
exchange rates and flat revenue per
employee.
66 BOuNDARIES
SCoUTiNG foR GRowTh
What is the best way to reach girls and
young women for the World Association of
girl guides and girl Scouts (WAgggS) in
Malaysia, Madagascar, Oman, Poland and
St. Vincent and the grenadines?
87 ESOMAR ANNOuNCEMENT
ESoMAR MEMBER ExPELLED
foR BREACh of iCC/ESoMAR
iNTERNATioNAL CoDE
Editor-in-chief
Simon Chadwick
Editors
Angela Canin, Kathy Joe
Sub-editor
Christopher McLaren
Editorial Board
Rex Briggs of Marketing Evolution
Ansgar Hölscher of Beiersdorf
Jeffrey Hunter, Consultant
John Kearon of BrainJuicer
David McCaughan of
McCann Erickson
Sean Meehan of IMD
Contributors
Jo Bowman, Robert Heeg,
Manfred Mareck, Tim Macer
Advertising sales
John van Hoop
business@esomar.org
Production co-ordinator
Mascha Ringers
Lay out & Art direction
Puntspatie [bno]
Print
Joh. Enschede Amsterdam
Subscriptions
customerservice@esomar.org
Research World welcomes contributions
and reserves the right to select and edit readers’
contributions.
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the information in this magazine is correct,
ESOMAR does not accept liability for any
inaccuracies that Research World might contain.
The views expressed in this publication are not
necessarily those of ESOMAR.
Copyright © ESOMAR 2014. All rights reserved.
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ERRATUM
The Data, analysis, action! article in the June/July
of RW should have stated that it was the father of
the teenager who didn't know she was pregnant
and who then apologised to Target for creating a
scene when he found out from his daughter that,
indeed, she was pregnant.

RESEARCH WORLD | September 2014 5
SEPTEMBER 2014
32 OuT OF THE BOx
RISE OF THE MACHINES
Digital pioneer Andy Hobsbawm tells Jo Bowman
the machines are here.
DATA viSUALiSATioN iN
MARkET RESEARCh
Mention data visualisation to any three
researchers, and reactions will range from
enthusiasm – and even conviction – to
scepticism or despair that it is another
example of “dumbing down.”
20 BOuNDARIES
ThE wAy of ThE MAGPiE
A three-step programme to transform
curiosity into inspirational thinking and
doing
DoiNG MoRE wiTh MoRE
Multi-phase and hybrid studies yield
greater depth
48 ESOMAR gLOBAL RESEARCH
TURNiNG ThE CoRNER
Returning confidence and increasing
investment in North America have helped
counter the effects of slowing growth in
the world’s biggest emerging economies
in 2013.
72 TRENDS
NEw hoRizoNS, NEw
REvENUE STREAMS
The research and marketing giant WPP
now makes 50 percent of its money from
markets and tools that didn’t exist in the
year 2000. CEO Sir Martin Sorrell explains
the rise of data – and why it doesn’t quite
have all the answers.
78 PRIVACY
To ARMS, SMART DATA
SCiENTiSTS!
How change, science-fiction and privacy
may be key to safeguarding research

EDITORIAL
SimOn CHADWiCk
A whole
new world
i said i pulled these facts and figures out at random, but actually,
when you look at them all together, they form a mosaic of the
world of research in the not-very-distant future. it is a future that is
intriguing and exciting, even if it is one for which we have to
mindfully change in order to be successful. and that brings me to
perhaps the most intriguing question of all: what type of people,
with what skill sets and what character traits, will lead us to that
success?
Clearly, they are going to have to be people who are naturally
curious and who have the ability to handle large and diverse data
sets. They are going to have to be digitally capable, too, but at
the same time possess the insight and empathy to really
understand consumers and the ‘why’ behind all that data. They
are going to have to be at ease in a multicultural world, and, most
of all, they are going to have to have the ability to take all of this,
synthesise it, put it into stories and visuals that are easily
understood and then consult on its meaning.
Very likely, we will not find all these attributes in one person,
but the concept of team collaboration is one that is very much
taking hold today. one can visualise teams of specialists, data
analysts, synthesisers, storytellers and consultants coming
together to bring real impact to the research that they design and
disseminate.
But, most excitingly, many of the traits that i have outlined are
the ones that characterise the Millennial Generation–
collaborative, curious, digital-native, data-proficient synthesists
who are completely at home with multi-tasking and dealing with
diverse sets of information in real time.
The fact that this generation is gearing up to assume
leadership positions in the market research and analytics industry
gives me tremendous hope for the future.
This month’s issue is a must read from cover to cover for
those wanting to gain a comprehensive idea of where we
are going as an industry/profession and how we are going
to get there. But for those of you who are just skimming
until that plane ride where you catch up on all your reading, let
me pull out some choice bits at random for you to chew on:
• 50% of WPP’s data investment Management (aka Kantar)
revenue now comes from markets and tools that did not exist
back in 2000. Who said that the mega research companies are
slow to change?
• Martin Sorrell, the Warren Buffett of media and market research,
is placing heavy bets on everything digital –and on the BRiCS.
• The ‘internet of things’ will create brand relationships that are
far more binding than those of today –and, in the process, be a
bonanza for data scientists and market researchers.
• The combination of big data and qualitative research means a
big win-win for research.
• Qualitative research is itself creating ‘little big data’ in the
thousands of pieces of text and video imagery that it is capable
of generating in one digital or mobile project –and the rise of
multi-part or sequential qualitative projects will only accelerate
that.
•We are the “curiosity industry.”
• Co-creation, synthesis, storytelling, predictive analytics, mobile
and passive data collection will be the pillars of our profession
in the future.
• data visualisation, a critical part of our success in the future,
takes expertise, analysis, teamwork and thoughtful design to
really work.
•We are in the midst of “a technological revolution and a
consulting evolution.”
• ‘agile research,’ in which research processes are increasingly
automated, will free up researchers to add consultative value in
a way that they have not been able to do in decades.

Mention data visualisation to any three researchers, and reactions will range from enthusiasm–and
even conviction–to scepticism or despair that it is another example of “dumbing down.”
graphic in the uK

John Schiela, vice president of
converged technology and media at
Phoenix Marketing, a uSa-based
consultative research company, says, “We
use a lot of different tools to visualise data:
Marketsight, dapresy, Excelsius; we do
stuff in SQl Server, HTMl. Each has their
benefits and their challenges.”
Schiela has moved both internal
analysts and clients away from
conventional cross-tabular reports to
predominantly visual and interactive
methods. He cites two major benefits:
“one is to avoid ‘death by data.’ i think
tables really limit how you look at data”;
secondly, he asserts, “visualisation allows
you to do [what] we often don’t do as an
industry, and that is to pull in other macro-level
data and visualise this, too.” For
Phoenix, this means moving towards what
Schiela describes as “a more business-report
style of presentation,” focused on
business questions and solutions, “as
opposed to a typical research report that
analyses the data you collected but does
not address the business solution.”
Schiela considers the view that
visualisation results in a diminution of
understanding or the misplacement of
rigour. For him, it is a malaise that stems
from execution: “We have a tendency to
say, ‘i need a dashboard.’ Someone takes
the data, dumps it in, and–hey, you’ve got
a dashboard! But they’ve not done the
business-process analysis, so you end up
with a pretty little dashboard that does not
show you anything from the business
perspective.”
He also sees that the role visualisation
can play in the analytical process is often
overlooked in research: it can offer a
better way to pick up weak trends. He will
use miniaturised charts with rating scales
which “you can eyeball in seconds,”
sometimes fashioning hundreds of these
tiny bar charts onto one sheet. “The
and then there are these tools that very
quickly make what are very good-looking
dashboards. a mistake people make is that
a dashboard that may be fantastic for
analysing the story can fall apart when they
then try to go on and communicate that
insight further.”
Whitehead emphasises the need to
understand the audience and not assume
that one dashboard will fit all eventualities.
She describes the solution she would
advocate for a large media-buying client
(which could apply equally to any major
brand): “The user-journey for a chief
marketing officer is probably two to three
choices to go through to reach the
decisions she needs to make, and for this
you need a very simple representation. She
can go and look at the workings, but she
probably does not need to. an analyst tool
lets you turn all the dials all the time and
check scenarios.”
“But the chief marketing officer still
needs to be able to check the workings;
she won’t have got to that position without
being able to,” adds Sturt. “and if you
present junior analysts with a really slick
interface with one or two insights, they will
immediately distrust it because it looks too
editorialised and too curated.”
Sturt mentions a particular appetite
among research companies and their
clients for visual storytelling combined with
interactivity. according to Whitehead,
“market research is more advanced than
many industries, and there is an increasing
understanding that creativity has a place
among more thoughtful market research
firms.”
whAT’S oUT ThERE?
Technology providers have responded, too;
from a position of there being no specialist
visualisation tools available for survey data
five years ago, there are now several,
including dapresy, Marketsight and E-Tabs.
The craft of presenting data as
images is suffering something of an
image problem in our industry,
even though it is unarguably the
direction of travel that data-saturated
enterprises are expecting their insight
providers to take. are researchers right to
be sceptical? i spoke with a range of data-visualisation
proponents who have no such
qualms.
The uK’s Guardian newspaper has, over
the years, led the field with its
extraordinarily revealing data visualisations
and infographics. its in-house digital
agency provided data visualisation and
storytelling services to clients and has
recently been spun off under the name
Guardian digital agency but it has recently
been acquired by Kantar, and now
operates under the name Graphic. it works
increasingly with market research
companies, visualising their data and
providing training in visual storytelling.
Emma Whitehead, head of Graphic, says:
“The challenge at the heart of data
visualisation is the tension between
creativity and scale. Technology gives you
scale, and people believe that must scale
creativity as well –which is a very significant
misconception.” Whitehead views the
emergence of web-based diY infographic
tools like Visual.ly and infogr.am as
‘potentially dangerous.’ “i can fill in a
template that will give me a nice long
infographic, but that is not the same as an
analyst and a designer really thinking
about it.”
DUMBiNG DowN?
Tobias Sturt, design and user experience
manager at Graphic, advocates a carefully
considered three-stage process to
visualising data into either dashboards or
infographics (see the accompanying
infographic). Each stage, he says, requires
different people with different skill sets:
“don’t listen to people who say they are a
data visualisation expert, and all you need
to do is hand over your data– it is all about
teamwork.”
Sturt is of the view that it is not
visualisation that risks trivialising data but
those who are willing to take a ‘clip-art’
approach to their visual presentation of
data. “There is a new wave of tools coming
along,” he says. “Tableau is getting bigger,
“I think tables really limit how
you look at data.”

for both data integration and interactivity.
He says, “if it is not wired up to be
connected to the live data–and constantly
changing– it is just a static chart. and
interactivity, which is not the same as
integration, also matters. Giving the user
controls so they can manipulate what they
are seeing makes for a much richer
experience.”
NETwoRkS
an area of data visualisation that warrants
more attention in research is network
mapping. Based on network theory, which
sits somewhere between sociology,
are used to working in a structure of
question by question, slide by slide,” he
says. “So we use a lot of visualisations that
basically have the same structure as a
PowerPoint deck, just presented online.
a good data visualisation will create a
story that helps the user to understand. it
will filter away everything that isn’t
relevant. That detail will still be there in the
background, but only when you ask for it.
a dashboard should be worth a hundred
slides.”
Michael denitto, CEo of Marketsight,
which also provides online charting and
dashboard software, speaks of the need
industry has developed something of a
fallacy about significance tests,” he says,
alongside other analytical methods such as
‘top-two-box’ reporting: “You have to be
careful you are not doping the results by
doing this.”
The specialist technical providers are
mindful of the challenges visualisation
presents to those working in market
research. Torbjörn andersson, CEo of
dapresy, which provides survey-data
visualisation software, sees researchers
struggling to break free from PowerPoint
and ‘sequential thinking’ when they try to
create a dashboard or infographic. “They
A network map of tweets containing #ESoMAR reveals trending topics and connections between bloggers, companies
and publishers active in the world of research
Created with NodexL (http://nodexl.codeplex.com) from the Social Media Research Foundation (www.smrfoundation)

with Pew Research, which identified
different typologies of social networks in
Twitter,1 including ‘community clusters,’
‘brand clusters’ and ‘polarised’ networks.
He says the story the research uncovered
is that “the shapes of these collections of
connections are important. if you look at a
topic and it is polarised, then you need to
do something different to one that is
highly interconnected.” The shapes can
determine the actions.
What unites each of these data-visualisation
advocates is the power they
see in its role in data analysis as well as in
presentation. data visualisation challenges
a number of research orthodoxies, not
least because it demands science and
creativity work hand in hand. While we
can’t all be designers, we can all heed the
call to develop our visual literacy.
1 “Mapping Twitter Topic Networks:” From Polarized
Crowds to Community Clusters, Pew Research
Center, bit.ly/1daAdZV
“There is a point where we are taught what is a line
chart, but at no point will [most people] get taught
what a network is.
Most of us have an obstacle to
overcome in learning how to interpret
these maps. as a network advocate, Smith
devotes much of his time to “cultivating
visual literacy” in his audience. as he
observes, “There is a point where we are
taught what is a line chart, but at no point
will [most people] get taught what a
network is. i have taken on the task of
converting the universe to understanding
what a network chart is. and it’s not
trivial.” not least because they also use
advanced statistics behind the scenes that
work on what he describes as “collections
of connections” in order to discern
patterns.
What this can mean for the researcher
is illustrated in a report Smith worked on
statistics and engineering, network maps
can unravel the complex webs of
interaction that exist within social networks
and provide a meaningful way of
interpreting geo-locational data from
mobile survey apps. network maps have
always been notoriously difficult to
produce, but one not-for-profit outfit, the
Social Media Research Foundation, has
recently developed nodeXl, an open-source
application which generates
complex network maps that are not only
relatively easy to interpret but also simple
to create.
Marc Smith, chief social scientist at
uSa-based Connected action Consulting
Group, is a sociologist with a particular
interest in network analysis. He is also a
major contributor to the Social Media
Research Foundation’s nodeXl initiative.
Smith is convinced of network maps’
relevance to market research. He says: “a
map performs three different tasks: Where
am i? Where else would i like to be? and
how do i get there? Entire networks can be
mapped, and when you do that, they will
tell you a story. For example, a network
can tell you who is the most important
person in a network. So ‘Where am i?’
‘Who’s important?’ and ‘How can i get to
them?’ are three important stories we can
tell with network maps.” They also happen
to be the same questions asked by a
majority of research projects.
Marc Smith is chief social scientist at Connected Action Consulting group in the uSA. John Schiela is VP of
converged technology and media at Phoenix Marketing in the uSA. Tobias Sturt is design and user
experience manager at graphic in the uK. Torbjörn Andersson is CEO of Dapresy in Sweden. Michael
DeNitto is CEO of Marketsight in the uK. Emma whitehead is head of graphic in the uK. Tim Macer is
managing director of meaning ltd and honorary research fellow at the university of Winchester in the uK.

BOuNDARIES
CHRiSTOpH WELTER
The Way of the Magpie
A three-step programme to transform curiosity
into inspirational thinking and doing
Market research–or, perhaps, the curiosity industry–needs to up its ante specifically when it comes to
delivering fresh and inspirational ways of thinking
Step 1. Experiment
The american writer Ralph-Waldo Emerson once said: “all life is
an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” So
dabble with different topics and pastimes to your heart’s
content –anything that has the bright shine of new knowledge or
even plain and simple fun. don’t think about how ‘useful’ it will be
for you; just collect and marvel.
niklas luhmann, one of most important sociologists of the
20th century, was famous for keeping an elaborate filing system,
his “Zettelkasten, ”where he stored snippets of information
pertaining to a myriad of different fields of knowledge. He liked to
keep them on file just in case they’d become useful at some point.
artists and craftspeople, too, like the fashion designer Paul
Smith, are renowned for maintaining workspaces in the style of a
Renaissance “Wunderkammer,” stacked full of strange and
beautiful objects.
There is so much information in the world that it’s quite
impossible to take it all in. But instead of narrowing our vision and
pursuing knowledge in our field only, let us approach the world of
knowledge as a playground of possibilities.
Step 2. Explore
But going broad is not enough. next, we need to go deep. at this
point, we should stop dabbling and start focusing. Pick one of the
shiny topics or activities, and explore it thoroughly. devote time
and passion to really understanding its intricacies. Pursue it with
the curiosity and the fervour of a child exploring the world for the
first time.
So go out and take a course in Japanese calligraphy, even
though you have no one to write to in Japanese. or go and learn
how to 3d-print objects, even though you don’t use a 3d printer
in everyday life.
non-utilitarian learning will transform you in subtle ways.
While immersing yourself, you will 1) acquire new skills; 2) gain a
By investing time in passionately exploring foreign fields of
knowledge and skill without utilitarian regard, we can
create the necessary momentum and sail on the winds of
change–with the magpie as our spirit animal.
The word is out: any business-service provider that wants to be
successful in today’s environment needs to come equipped with
the ability to engage, inspire and wow their clients. Market
research is frequently diagnosed with an image problem, yet i
would argue that our industry is ideally equipped to excel in this
race.
at the most basic level, it is said that the sheer number of
interests you have has a fundamental influence on your overall
level of ‘interestingness.’ in that case, we should easily be able to
outperform our competitors –after all, we are an industry founded
upon curiosity. So how can we cultivate our curiosity more so as
to create the kind of environment in which fresh thinking can
thrive? let us look to one of the most curious species in the
animal world for inspiration– the magpie.
ENTER ThE MAGPiE
Consider the magpie, that famously feisty stealer of all things
shiny. This bird is believed to be one of the most intelligent
animals on this planet, capable even of recognising its own mirror
image. Yet magpie’s pursuit of all things shiny is something of a
mystery to researchers. For all we know, they pick up glitzy things
and bring them to their nests without any functional intent–just
out of sheer curiosity and playfulness.
i think we can learn from this bird’s refreshingly playful
attitude: we can learn to let go of our overly utilitarian, linear and
goal-orientated way of pursuing knowledge and skills. let the
magpie stand instead as a symbol of taking a non-directed
interest in the world, and follow me on a three-step process to
inspirational thinking.

User instructions for successful magpie-ing: Please try at home
and fresh approaches in the industry. Consider the theatre fan
who pursues stage acting as a hobby in her free time, and one
day it hits her that a group of actors could help revolutionise the
debrief as we know it by acting out findings live with clients. or
take the animal lover who relentlessly ponders the intricate ways
in which we need to understand different creatures’ sensory
perceptions so that we can treat all animals ethically: one fine
evening it hits him that we humans are animals with different
sensory faculties too, but research so far has left the gap wide
open. Thus the idea of five-senses research is born.
To make the most of it, we should try to instil the magpie
attitude deep into the organisational culture of research:
• Make room for inspiration, spaces where people can dabble
with their curiosities. Even just having a physical library of
inspiring books will make a difference over time.
• Encourage people to exploit their life’s passions, possibly in
conjunction with flexible career and work-time models.
• Create spaces where minds and ideas can connect, whether
they are inspiration sessions or evening salons for discussion on
hot topics. and invite other magpie thinkers along to join.
The wonderful thing about magpie-ing is that all you need is
curiosity and passion. let them guide you, and don’t get in their
way.
fresh perspective on things; and 3) meet new people. or, as the
philosopher Roman Krznaric notes, it “may be worth learning to
wear the hats of different professions in order to stimulate us to
ask new questions or challenge our assumptions and
conventional thinking.”
Step 3. Connect
The last step of magpie-ing is the one where you wait … and
trust that magic will happen. Trust that your newly acquired
knowledge and skills will eventually connect you with other ideas
in ways hitherto unforeseen. History is full of examples that such
magic is quite real.
in 1931, there was a humble draftsman working at the london
underground Signals office by the name of Harry Beck. Harry
had a passion for physics and had acquired quite a good bit of
knowledge of electrical circuit diagrams. and then one fine
day –Boom! – it hit him that the apparent confusion of the london
underground could be seen and rendered as a circuit diagram,
and the iconic version of the underground map we all know was
born.
Charles darwin took time off from his studies in medicine in
1827 to go out on a geological excursion studying fossils. He was
both astounded and puzzled by their geographical variation. He
published amazingly detailed illustrations of the fossils, but at first
nothing much happened. Years later, when reading Malthus on
the struggle for existence, new neural connections started
forming, and gradually, over the following months, an idea was
born: natural selection.
Maria Popova, curator of the knowledge and inspiration blog
Brain Pickings, says: “in order for us to truly create and contribute
to the world, we have to be able to connect countless dots, to
cross-pollinate ideas from a wealth of disciplines, to combine and
recombine these pieces and build new castles.”
That, in essence, is what a magpie attitude to inspiration is all
about.
ThE MAGPiE RESEARChER
Great artists and scientists are very often magpie characters, but
what is a researcher if not a mixture of artist and scientist?
Magpie attitude has lead and is continually leading to innovation
Christoph welter
is director of strategy at Point-Blank International in germany
1. Experiment
Go out there and just dabble with new
knowledge and activities. Like the
magpie, pick things up just because they
are glitzy and shiny. And if they fail to
spark any deeper interest – let them go.
Dabble, experiment, play.
2. Explore
Focus on one of the things you have
picked up – the one that inspires you
most. Dedicate your time and attention
to it. Bring it into your ‘magpie nest’ and
make it your own, but still be ‘intent’
free with your choice – go for what
drives you, not for what you consider
useful.
3. Connect
Trust and wait for magic to happen. The
new perspectives and skills you have
acquired will transform and eventually
enable you to rethink your job in novel
ways. Lucky collisions between ideas old
and new will spark fresh thinking and
doing.

RESEaRCH CHallEnGE
BRiAnA BROWnELL
The New Look
of Analytics
As we’re sparring, my kickboxing trainer asks me the same question
in every session: “Where are you looking?”

something cold and complicated. as a
result, the ability to communicate results to
a wider audience in a compelling way,
regardless of that audience’s technical
sophistication, is an essential skill for any
analytics professional.
Storytelling has been a major trend in
advertising, because stories have a power -
ful emotional draw. But this approach has
relevance within an organisation as well.
uptake of a new strategy within a business
depends both on internal stakeholders’
desire and ability to execute it. it is no
longer required (or even desirable) to fill
100 slides with tables and discuss minute
statistically significant comparisons.
illustrating findings using graphics, video
and stories is becoming the norm.
The balance between actionable and
optimal differs considerably within each
organisation, but the common struggle in
describing ever more complex statistical
methods suggests that the art of
explanation promises to be an important
point of discussion in the field for a while
yet. Changes in communication style both
between organisations and within an
organisation have a major impact on
finding and retaining talent in an area
where the trifecta skill-set of business
acumen, people skills and technical skills is
already nearly impossible to come by.
LookiNG AhEAD
Ever since nate Silver made a nearly dead-on
prediction of the 2012 uS presidential
election results, while at the same time
various pollsters around the world were
way off in their election forecasts, analytics
has been both harkened as a miraculous
tool and reviled as unreliable. it’s no
wonder that many businesses have also
shown an increased interest in using
predictive analyses to enhance the insights
they get out of their analysis of static data,
while at the same time failing to implement
those results (or doing so only with
considerable trepidation).
With all the technological advances in
the ways in which data can be stored and
quickly analysed–and results applied–new
models can be quickly examined and fine-tuned
as they are operationalised.
Refinement and testing that were not
previously possible have been enabled by
increasingly fast processing power.
or industry movement, companies are
increasingly looking inward as they
attempt to streamline their brand promise
and improve their competitiveness in the
marketplace.
LookiNG foR CoNNECTioNS
‘Big data’ has been a big buzzword for a
while, and many businesses feel that
they’re missing out on the trend if they
aren’t doing something with big data. in
reality, there isn’t a magical big data
formula that will turn a data set into
relevant, actionable insights. in many
cases, the biggest issue with big data is
indecision– there are so many possibilities
that it is very difficult to determine what
type of analysis might be appropriate.
With such an array of data sources,
dashboards are increasingly the go-to hub,
as they provide a single place where
businesses can easily see key metrics
across different business lines, locations,
time frames and, yes, big data sources.
Collating and visualising the data is only
part of the issue, however. often, finding a
meaningful way to deal with that big data
question mark takes a considerable
amount of art and ingenuity – skills that
take time to develop.
Fortunately, there are some
straightforward strategies to consider. one
of the great promises of big data is its
ability to facilitate insight triangulation–
looking at the similarities and differences
in multiple data sets which are not neces -
sar ily linked together, such as syndicated
products, primary research and business
intelligence. Together, they can provide
much more insight than any one in
isolation.
LookiNG fRiENDLy
if the word “analytics” makes you think of
a concrete room filled with giant computer
towers and endless reams of numbers
flashing across the screen, you’re not
alone. analytics is often perceived as
While i am supposed to be
looking broadly at the
various places that a punch
or kick could come from,
noticing and taking advantage of
potentially beneficial openings, i am
almost always focusing on the task
immediately at hand–avoiding that fist
coming right towards my face.
often it’s the same at the office, where
there are a myriad of daily distractions.
While switching focus from project to
project, it’s rare to find the time to look
more broadly at trends in industry and to
notice the similarities in the problems
faced by many businesses. But major
changes in consumer and business
behaviour are becoming more and more
evident across sectors. These changes give
an indication of how the relevance and
demand for certain specialised analytics
may rise, thereby shaping the new look of
analytics.
LookiNG iNwARD
Brand is no longer exclusively the domain
of the marketing and communications
departments but rather has become an all-permeating
quality: a company’s brand is
viewed as an extension of its corporate
culture. The focus on united culture and
value proposition means that everyone
from the frontlines to the C-suite influences
the company’s identity from the inside out.
at the same time, customers are also
expecting to be closer to companies
producing the products they use and love.
Many businesses have allowed customers
to come in from the outside, treating them
as important partners and sounding boards
for new product development and
adjustments to the customer experience.
as a result, the distinction between
company insiders and outsiders is
becoming increasingly blurred. While most
analytics in the past was outwardly focused
on things like understanding consumer
brand perceptions, competitor behaviour
“Brand is no longer exclusively the domain of the
marketing and communications departments.”

natural experiments with pricing, positioning and
marketing messaging are becoming common.
whERE ARE yoU LookiNG?
With the term ‘big data’ being bandied
about in mainstream business magazines
and infographics of all kinds clogging up
our Facebook feeds, the major, rapid
changes in analytics are set to become
increasingly important. Broader trends in
operations management continue to affect
the demand for specialised analytics.
Fortunately, analytics is by its nature
reflective. Trends we see when looking
outward can have a great influence on how
we are able to position ourselves in regard
to clients –and within our own
organisations. By searching for ways that
analytics can provide increasing value in
today’s and tomorrow’s economy, we can
make sure that data science remains a
crucial investment for businesses in years
to come.
with video camera capabilities but also by
widespread video sharing online. Making
use of mobile technology to understand
how location fits into the bigger research
picture in terms of service offering,
advertising and targeting remains a
promising area to explore more fully.
LookiNG BENEATh ThE SURfACE
indirectly collected data about behaviour
via devices such as door counters, outdoor
sensors and time-usage recorders is
quickly increasing in variety and availability.
This passive data has the great advantage
of providing the opportunity to compare
observed behaviours to peoples’
perceptions of their own behaviour.
natural experiments with pricing,
positioning and marketing messaging are
becoming common.
Many organisations are interested in
doing their best to optimise offerings
before bringing a product to market, and
this explains the popularity of data-collection
methods that attempt to elicit
naturalistic information about likely
behaviour prior to launch. increasingly
popular methods include neuroscience or
gamification techniques, both of which
attempt to circumvent our tendencies to
rationalise past behaviours and explain
motivations when asked about them
directly. Combining implicit and explicit
methodologies is becoming an
increasingly powerful way to analyse and
predict behaviour.
Regrettably, though, most sources are
at present vague about the actual
methods used in forecasting, while at the
same time seeming to overpromise results,
thus making it difficult to separate the
marketing hype from any truly profound
new prediction methods. let’s hope
increased interest will lead to increased
transparency in this area.
LookiNG AT LoCATioN
With smartphone penetration steadily
marching up in nearly every country
around the world, mobile data is a major
opportunity for insightful analysis into
culture, lifestyles and behavioural patterns.
location-based data has been used in
passive ways to optimise street traffic,
predict repeat business, track customer
movement within an establishment and
optimise new store placement.
active data uses mobile ethnography,
and this “day-in-the-life” type of deep
qualitative research is made possible not
only by the prevalence of smartphones
Briana Brownell
is manager of analytics at Insightrix Research in
Canada

OuT OF THE BOx
JO BOWmAn
Rise of the
machines
digital pioneer andy Hobsbawm tells Jo Bowman the machines are here.
model, renting them on a thrust-per-second basis in a way similar
to small businesses buying services from amazon. Such a model
is made possible because of instruments that allow remote
monitoring of each engine. The engines, in a sense, “talk” to the
engineers back at HQ.
imagine this model applied to car insurance, Hobsbawm says:
already, tracking devices allow policies to be altered according to
the way individuals drive, but what if you could have a policy for
your regular routes and then upgrade when you go away for a
long weekend? in healthcare, a “smart pill” has been approved
for use by the uS Food and drug administration. “it’s sort of the
equivalent of swallowing an entire surgical team in terms of the
diagnostics – the idea of new technologies and pathways that
allow you to remotely monitor health and even administer
treatment, or use wearable technology to encourage people to
lead healthier lifestyles so they don’t get ill in the first place.”
For objects to be connected with the internet, they need to
become searchable resources with their own digital footprint: an
identity that can be searched, linked to, shared and manipulated.
This means objects can be both virtual and physical. Your car, for
instance, could then become part of your social network. “i’m not
entirely sure why you’d want a car to be part of your social
network, but it’s interesting that you can,” Hobsbawm says. “You
can friend your car, and it can send you alerts saying ‘My battery
needs recharging.’” There are fridge magnets that can re-order
milk when you’re running low, Philips light bulbs that change
colour according to instructions from a user’s smartphone and
indicators that alert a householder –or farmer –that plants or
crops need watering. it’s conceivable that a washing machine
would be able to recommend a trusted local tradesperson–and
even book an appointment –when it needs repairing. Budweiser
have developed a novelty branded light that, once it has been
told which team your support, launches into a celebration
whenever your team scores.
We search online for gift ideas, tradespeople, news
and entertainment, but what if you could Google a
parking space and your possessions could talk to
each other?
The connections that have linked people and businesses
through their computers and phones are about to precipitate the
next industrial revolution, one no less significant than the
invention of rail travel and electricity. andy Hobsbawm, founder
and chief marketing officer of software company Evrythng, says
the nascent “internet of things” is a game-changer for individuals,
businesses and governments, as everyday objects from parking
meters and thermostats to medicines and clothing connect to the
internet via sensors or computer chips.
By 2015, Hobsbawm predicts that one trillion devices will be
connected to the internet, billions of them not computers or
smartphones but ‘things.’ “now is the coming dawn of when
things start to become connected, from the chairs you sit on to
the streets, the buildings and potentially even smart dust in the
air,” he says. “There are a lot of ‘things’ in the world, and for
them to start becoming connected has got to be quite significant,
even if we don’t know exactly how it’s going to play out. it’s a
very big, disruptive shift.”
We’re already familiar with the beginnings of the internet of
things. near-field communication enables physical things like
london’s oyster cards, which can be used for payment across the
travel network, to feed massive amounts of data about passenger
patterns to data analysts who can work out how best to manage
traffic flows. The same kind of tracking could be used to manage
container ships and other ways of moving.
ThE BUSiNESS MoDEL
But it’s not just new connections; new business models are
emerging from the internet of things as well. Rolls-Royce, for
instance, is able to proved jet engines on a subscription-style

consumer products sold every year – smart tags that can trigger
the launch of information or links via a smartphone are entirely
plausible, Hobsbawm says. an object could, therefore, “tell” its
new owner how it was made or provide links to warranties,
instruction manuals and ongoing suggestions for use.
“What we’re trying to do is connect people to brands via
physical things,” he says. The new owner of a guitar, for instance,
might “claim” it online through a QR code on the item or a near-field
communication tag, and that online connection could trigger
tailored experiences. a discount at your nearest music shop could
be offered; you could receive music playlists if you like a certain
style of music; you might receive a suggestion to invest in heavier
strings, links to musicians nearby looking for a guitarist for their
band or even a discount on a British airways flight to nashville
because the guitar “knows” you’ve been listening to a lot of
Johnny Cash. The guitar manufacturer goes from knowing
nothing about purchasers to having an ongoing relationship with
them.
other brand experiences could be triggered by, say, a sudden
change in the temperature where the user of a product lives or
the national football team making the World Cup finals. a
particular book could become a digital pass to a literary festival,
and a drinks brand might send a limousine for your ride home
one night because it knows it’s your birthday. a motorist might be
able to follow parking spaces on Twitter and know when they’re
vacant, and a cereal packet that might normally include a plastic
toy for children might instead provide points on Candy Crush.
diageo has done a Father’s day promotion in which a
personalised film could be digitally attached to bottles bought as
gifts, with a CRM opt-in for both giver and recipient.
The skills required for a marketing world that’s more about
personalisation than a broadcast blast are an extension,
Hobsbawm says, of those that have always been at the heart of
marketing. “in a sense, modern marketing is deeply powered by
technology at all levels. if you look at what exists in a CMo’s stack
of systems, it’s becoming unbelievably sophisticated. What i’ve
talked about is an extension of that, even if it’s a dramatic
amplification. That would suggest that anybody who’s in
marketing, unless they’re fluent in technology and they’re
understanding that world and thinking of technology-powered
marketing as marketing, then they’re going to run into problems.
The world is networked. all marketing is a way of understanding
the world in order to connect buyers and sellers, so if you don’t
understand the world, you’re in trouble.”
iNfoRMiNG DESiGN
There is some risk that if objects and brands are doing their own
data collection and informing communications, researchers are
made, to some extent, redundant. But actually convincing
consumers to connect up their many things and be honest about
the information they supply is where a new role for research
emerges, Hobsbawm says.
“The research industry is in a very interesting place, because
the more data there is, the more potential insight there is. in a
petabyte age, where you can turn on features for, say, three
million people and just see what they do, i think that does put
“These things can be combined in interesting ways. disney
came up with a storybook application on a tablet that can be
synched with your Philips light, so if you’re reading a kid’s story
on the iPad, the lighting will change according to the narrative.
So you can start to see ways that all this creativity creates new
opportunities, because it’s all part of a system, and i think we’re
only just starting to scratch the surface.” often, the applications
of these types of advances are not immediately evident, but
Hobsbawm says that’s no reason to dismiss them: “They have
ways of becoming useful in ways you can’t imagine.”
BRAvE NEw woRLD of MARkETiNG
This all throws brand marketing into a new light, because when
objects become connected, their digital lives can change the
physical products, too. Take nike running shoes connected to the
FuelBand system. “The shoe is actually a social, connected data
service that connects you to friends. it tracks your runs, it gives
you access to a community, and if you compared two nike shoes
the same size and design, they’re in fact completely different,
because your shoe has a data footprint different to mine,”
Hobsbawm says. “What that means for me is that to suddenly
switch shoes is as painful as it is to switch from amazon to
another e-commerce provider that doesn’t have all of my history
and my credit card and wishlist and so on. So the ability to
personalise objects –and for them to understand your history and
use it– is quite a powerful way to bind people to them. We’re
moving to a time where objects are dynamic and adjust
themselves to your preferences. Things are going to change, and
therefore the way they’re marketed is going to change as well.”
as Stefan olander, VP of digital sport with nike, has said,
once a brand has established a direct relationship with a
consumer, the brand doesn’t need to advertise to them.
While it would be prohibitively expensive to computer-chip
every single object consumers buy – there are 3.3 trillion

“Convincing consumers to connect up their
many things and be honest about the
information they supply is where a new role
for research emerges.” Copyright Market Research Society – MRS
pressure on pre-existing techniques which are more slow moving.
The question for the research industry would be how fluent they
become with managing the analytics of big data–blending these
enormous data sets and predictive algorithms –as well as more of
the qualitative and psychological research. if the research industry
really embraces the big data analytics as well as all of the
traditional skills, then it’s in a really good place.”
Helping brands understand how consumers relate to the
internet of things would be a vital service. “What is it that people
actually want is where marketing and research comes in,” he says.
“How you create the right propositions needs deep insights. do
people want to be alerted when the burglar alarm has gone off?
i would think yes, because it’s a situation where you want to take
some action and you want to alert the police as well. do you
want to be alerted when the washing machine’s finished its load?
Possibly. These are all just proposition questions about how you
design the service. The nuance of how you design the service is
the experience. But whether or not people want to be alerted of
that, you need to research it and ask them.”
Andy hobsbawm
is founder and chief marketing officer of software company Evrythng

RESEARCH IN BuSINESS
STEpHEn pHiLLipS
THE FuTuRE OF
MARKET RESEARCH
Full-service-self-serve research
as we all know, our industry has changed radically in the last 20 years.
ThE MARkET RESEARCh
vALUE CURvE
our chief technology officer recently gave
a presentation at the iieX conference,
delivering a great illustration of the failings
of the traditional market research business
model. We can all think of projects that
have dragged on, squeezing the profit
margin with every day spent drilling into
the data. The traditional market research
value curve has a steep initial climb, where
research agencies spend their time under -
standing a client’s issues and applying their
consultative frameworks. data collection
can be swift, and though coding question -
naires can take some time, it’s when we
move into processing, analysis and
reporting that the profit we deliver drops
significantly. Junior research executives are
relied upon to review the data and deliver
insight, simply because it’s not economi -
cally viable to have consultants poring over
every table. data processing and analysis
often takes several weeks, and a whole
team is occupied with making sure that the
data is clean–and manipulating it when
necessary. This process squeezes the real
value, the delivery of strategic insight,
which is rushed to meet with tight dead -
lines and already overflowing timesheets.
in the new world of research that we
envisage, the value curve is radically
different. Expert resources have been
deployed in the design of the project
customers at the heart of business?
absolutely. do we need to evolve and
adapt to this new world? of course.
Join me, if you will, and imagine what
the insight world will look like in five
years’ time.
What was once our bread and butter is
increasingly at risk from new approaches,
in many cases approaches which fit better
with the pace and demands of modern
business. in five years, the insight
professionals who will have profited and
succeeded in this new world will have
been those who have managed to convey,
package and deliver their expertise free of
the constraints of traditional market
research. data checking and processing,
laborious survey scripting, charting and
aligning PowerPoint presentations: all of
these will become programmatic,
handled by machines. our future lies in
adding value, using our knowledge and
expertise to consult and design, to
analyse and put trends in context.
The process of market research will be
squeezed and dismantled, and people
delivering insight will become increasingly
skilled consultants, aided by machines.
as a wise speaker at a conference
i recently attended quipped, we are
looking at a “technology revolution and a
consultancy evolution.” i can find no
better words to sum up how i see the
future of our industry.
From the shift from CaTi to online
surveys in the 90s to the
emergence of mobile, big data
and insight communities in the 00s,
innovation in research technology has
consistently given us the tools to position
customer insight at the heart of modern
business.
in recent years, however, the pace of
change has been accelerating rapidly.
Computing is advancing faster than ever
before. Coding languages such as Ruby
on Rails and cloud technology like
amazon’s EC2 have democratised
technology, allowing entrepreneurs with a
vision to quickly develop an idea into a
robust, scalable digital business. in this
context, business ideas are exploited with
increasing ease, and new ways of
collecting, understanding and
disseminating customer data are
emerging all the time. our clients are also
moving faster than ever, and where they
were previously content to wait weeks or
months for insight, they are now used to
waiting minutes, calling on big data
platforms or social media queries to
inform their decision making instead of
conventional survey data.
Where does it leave us, you might ask,
the stalwart research industry with our rich
heritage and wealth of experience in
understanding people? do we still have
an indispensable voice in keeping

Pawel Kuczynski

enterprises, companies which couldn’t
previously afford the premium that great
research delivery often demands. Think, for
example, of a marketing manager for a mid-sized
brand, someone who might have an
annual budget of uS $200,000 for
marketing and perhaps uS $15,000 for
research. Most research agencies would
struggle to deliver real value for that
amount, and, though we might not want to
admit it, many would want to avoid that
sort of client –often demanding and with
comparatively shallow pockets. With full-service-
self-serve tools, that client can now
run up to ten projects in a year, testing
creative campaigns, understanding brand
drivers, filtering taglines, exploring social
media and running online focus groups – in
essence, a full, agile, slim-line research pro -
gramme delivered to an affordable budget.
ultimately, we are convinced there are
benefits for all in the way that insight
delivery is changing. it’s a brave new world,
and not everyone will jump in head-first.
However, it is a very brave agency which
decides to ignore the trends and chal -
lenges in their entirety. This is agile, it’s
the future, and we are proud to be a part
of it.
ting to their thinking with innovative
software features that our application
affords. Forward-thinking people in those
companies share our goal: to add value
through design and great thinking rather
than process. of course, there have been
questions around cannibalisation,
particularly with high-value assets such as
the ConversionModel and Millward Brown’s
creative testing being made available at a
reduced price. However, i would argue that
the far greater threat comes from diY solu -
tions and other sources of data managem -
ent which, if left without response, are
likely to erode our revenues with increasing
severity over the next decade.
it is often all too easy to focus on risk
without giving enough thought to the
opportunity that innovation enables. We
see great potential in the full-service-self-serve
space to increase research use and,
in some cases, even increase research
spend overall. We envisage an agile world
in which consumer insight is affordable and
accessible enough to be deployed
frequently and iteratively, in which, for
example, brand managers can inject the
consumer voice at every stage of the
creative development process instead of
relying on one or two potentially lengthy
and expensive research projects. Full-service-
self-serve makes this method of
working viable. Certainly our experience is
that, once businesses adopt this approach,
the benefits they reap easily validate their
risk, keeping the customer at the heart of
the development process while
maintaining an emphasis on delivering
even more great quality insight.
By cutting down on process, and
consequently cost, we are also opening up
expert insight to small- and medium-sized
before it has even begun. The process is by
and large programmatic, with some time
spent on customisation, and the value that
researchers provide increases towards the
end of the project: spending their time
consulting and having meaningful
conversations, and charging clients for their
time accordingly. We are clearly still in the
early days, but our experiences with our
partners suggest that this is more than just
speculative musing. They are seeing the
early stages of a step-change in their
relationship with clients, and it is exciting.
iNTELLiGENT AUToMATioN
The really exciting change is that the reach
of technology won’t stop with process;
software is getting much smarter. We invest
a lot of our time experimenting with
automation, and even analysis is on our
radar. By employing senior consultants to
craft strategic, category and even brand-specific
analysis text, then linking that text
to changes and permutations in data, we
can manage insight-generation with the
click of a button. There are some
limitations to this technology – that’s where
researchers step in to give context–but we
are constantly striving to improve it.
Whatever you may think, the stake is in the
ground, and the challenge to the industry
has been set: evolve, or watch your market
share cede to new innovations.
our vision for an agile, consultancy-driven,
technology-enabled research world
is validated by the increasing number of
entrants to the ‘full-service-self-serve’
space. as but one example, at ZappiStore,
we have partnered with forward-thinking
companies such as Millward Brown, TnS
and MMR to deliver their iP onto our
automated self-service platform, contribu -
Stephen Phillips
is CEO at ZappiStore in the uK
Value/Prot
Time T
Full service MR
offering adds
signicant value to
client by spending
time understanding
their company and
problem
Data gathering still
protable (Survey
Monkey EBITDA
53.9%)
Reliance on execs having to
nd the story every single
time undermines
standardisation and quality
Signicant time spent on
data manipulation and
hygienic factors before any
true value can be added
Data structures dened
early in process with limited
manipulation €exibility leads
to high rework costs
Manual interventions to
produce usable information
from source data increases
costs signicantly
Strategic insights
deliverd under
time and cost
pressure, if at all
Study
design
Data
collection
Data
cleaning
Mistakes Fiddle
with pptx
Headline insights
and strategic
next steps
Stare at tables
looking for the
story
Value/Prot
Time
ZappiStore process
by automating study
design and data
collection
Data processing and
reporting delivered in
real time via expert-led
automated data
platform – building the
story behind the data
Researchers focused on
exploring the story to
create actionable
outcomes for the client
Beginning of a true
enriched dialogue with
each client that focuses
on future steps
Study
design
Data
collection
Headline insights and
strategic next steps
What next?
Graph 1. Traditional market research model Graph 2. New world research value curve

ESOMAR gLOBAL RESEARCH
JO BOWmAn
Turning the corner
A brightening outlook
Returning confidence and increasing investment in north america have helped counter
the effects of slowing growth in the world’s biggest emerging economies in 2013.

Graph 1. Global market research turnover 2013 US $ 40,287 million
such a small base that these markets continue to have little
impact on the overall performance of the region. Bangladesh
grew at more than 28% in 2013, but it remains less than one
one-hundredth the size of the Chinese market. The region’s net
growth was 1.6%.
• The two biggest markets in latin america both saw declines in
market research turnover in 2013: Brazil by 2.8% and Mexico by
5.9%. Brazil’s dip can be somewhat attributed to the fact that,
in the previous year, there was a surge in demand for research
ahead of the hotly contested municipal elections, while in
Mexico the lull follows a cooling of the broader economy.
argentina and Peru were the stand-out growth markets in the
region, posting 19.7% and 15.5% growth respectively, although
in Peru, the lower costs of digital research compared to other
methods is leading some clients to move their research in-house,
hurting agency revenues. net growth for the region was
-0.1%.
•While absolute earnings volume in local currencies was up in
africa, the effect of exchange rate changes versus the uS dollar
and high inflation– surpassing 16% in East africa in
2013– meant the region ultimately had a net decline in inflation-adjusted
revenue of 1.2%. The region’s biggest market, South
africa, enjoyed growth in digital research and served a growing
number of domestic clients looking to expand across the
region, but it struggled with a growing number of clients
seeking ad hoc work rather than contracts, smaller client
budgets and a shortage of trained staff; it saw a net loss of
2.0%. Meanwhile, West africa (up 7.3%) and nigeria (up 5.3%)
were buoyant.
• in the Middle East, a slowing decline in 2013 represented an
improvement over the sharp drop-offs in 2012. net growth was
-1.2% for the region. lebanon was the star of the show, posting
ESoMaR’s annual report on the state of the market
research industry shows that north america’s recovery
from recession helped world research turnover rise 0.7%
in 2013 to uS $40.3 billion. This is the same overall
growth rate the industry saw a year earlier, but then it was latin
america and asia-Pacific that were buoying the industry. This
year’s Global Market Research report, to be launched at the
ESoMaR Congress in nice on 8 September, suggests that 2013
was a year of transition: there is strong optimism that 2014 will be
a more prosperous year for the industry, with forecasts predicting
the highest levels of growth for some years (and significantly
higher than a year ago).
The GMR report ventures beyond regional averages to give
an overview of the market; it looks at how the industry has been
tackling the challenges it faces in different market sectors and
how it is expanding into new areas, growing its value as an
essential service to business (often helped by technology that
once looked like it might threaten the sector’s very existence).
ToP-LiNE fiNDiNGS
Europe continued to account for 40% of global research turnover,
despite none of the Eu-15 countries making it onto the list of the
ten fastest-growing markets in the region. north america grew its
share by two percentage points to 39% of the total; its gain was
asia-Pacific’s loss. Booms in small, fast-growing asian markets
failed to make up for slowing growth in China and Japan (after
adjustment for inflation). Highlights of this year’s GMR report
include:
• Market research turnover increased in 49 countries or sub-regions
in 2013 and declined in 40 (after adjustment for
inflation).
• in north america, the uS grew by 2.7% in the year, tracking
steady improvement in the national economy. Growth in
revenue from survey research slowed to less than 1%, but
qualitative enjoyed a strong recovery, as did syndicated
research and media research. Research turnover in Canada is
only a fraction of that in the uS, but growth there of 7.4%
helped lift revenue for the region as a whole by 2.9%.
• ukraine was the fastest growing market in Europe for the
second year running (8.2% net growth in 2013), followed by
Russia (5.8%), most likely driven by strong performances in the
first three quarters of the year (before tensions over Crimea and
eastern ukraine flared up). France (0.1% growth), the
netherlands (0.6%), denmark (0.4%) and luxembourg (2.0%)
were the only markets in the Eu-15 to stay in positive territory,
with Portugal (down 22%) the hardest hit by general economic
hardship. Bulgaria (5.3% growth) was the best performer
among new Eu member states. Cyprus, the smallest research
market among the new members, saw revenues plummet by
over a third. overall, European net growth was -1.4%.
• in asia-Pacific, the largest market, Japan, showed sluggish
growth of just 0.5% (after adjustment for inflation) and China,
which now has turnover approaching that of Japan, showed
slower growth in 2013 (4.4% as compared to more than 11% a
year earlier). Myanmar, Bangladesh, Cambodia and laos grew
at a tremendous pace (50% in the case of Myanmar), but from
Middle East
$ 277; 1%
W
Africa
$ 382; 1%
Latin America
$ 1,920; 5%
Asia Paci!c
$ 5,998; 15% (-1)
North America
$ 15,705; 39% (+2)
Europe
$16,005; 40%
ESoMaR estimates. Rounded figures presented. Brackets show percentage point
changes in market share compared to 2012.

Graph 2. Net growth rate 2013 (adjusted for inflation)
Exchange rate fluctuations eliminated. iMF inflation rates used to determine net growth.
coming from expansion in the healthcare, technology, financial
services and fashion sectors.
“as africans are very conscious of status, even in rural areas
you’ll find some of the latest Samsung phones and iPhones;
they’re very keen to purchase products that express who they are.
We probably have more German cars than they have in
Germany,” Falala says. as people move up the socio-economic
ladder, they look to express themselves in new ways, so there’s
growing demand for cultural experiences such as theatre, dance
and dining out.
Globally, the manufacturing sector is still the biggest
consumer of market research, followed by media businesses and
financial services.
despite the overall lacklustre growth in the global market
research industry in 2013, there’s confidence that business is on
the up. a far larger majority of respondents to the GMR
questionnaire than in recent years is predicting better times in
2014: 82% said they expected growth (compared to 60% a year
ago); 9% expect an industry decline in revenues (an improvement
record net gains of 38.9% due to rising demand for research
and the launch of the GfK MRME TaM panel. The Gulf
Cooperation Council countries –Bahrain, Kuwait, oman, Qatar,
Saudi arabia and the uaE–together are the biggest market in
the region and grew 4.4% in 2013. Continuing instability in the
region affected the industry in other countries. israel saw a
1.5% net decline, Egypt’s market dipped 8%, iran dropped
11.2% and iraq was down 45.5%.
ThE NEw NoRMAL
The biggest markets for research remained unchanged from
2012: the uS stayed at the top of the league and in 2013
accounted for 37% of revenue (followed by the uK, Germany,
France and Japan). These five markets together represented
70 per cent of the industry’s global takings.
Yet it is apparent that business confidence has yet to return in
these markets to the levels that existed before the 2009
economic crisis. “We’re operating in a world which is growing at
a much slower pace than before the financial crisis, not just in the
developed world but also in developing markets,” says ipsos
founder and co-president didier Truchot. “The corporate world
has become very risk averse,” he says. “innovation is being used
to streamline a business rather than as leverage for growth. The
taste for adventure just isn’t there.”
developing markets still present the strongest influence on
growth in demand for research, though the large BRiC markets
are less significant than they were a few years ago, and smaller,
fast-growing emerging economies are where much of the client
appetite is shifting. at the same time, the rise of technology-based
companies is putting into sharp focus the true importance
of brand and reputation, along with the potential for technology
to disrupt not just tech-focused industry fields but also financial
services, retail and media.
“What’s most exciting is seeing the market research industry
revitalised by new thinking, doing what we always used to
do– taking the best of the new scientific thinking and technology
and adopting it into practice,” says GfK global training director
Phyllis Macfarlane.
latin america is one of the regions presenting strong
opportunities for future growth, as local and international
businesses seek to understand the newly affluent–and those on
lower incomes whose spending power is slowly rising.
Sarah Boumphrey is head of countries and consumers
research at Euromonitor; she says the region’s increasing
economic stability, young population and proximity to the uS are
helping growth. “There are more than 87 million middle-class
homes with household incomes between uS $10,000 and uS
$45,000,” she says. “Engaging with these consumers early on can
produce long-term benefits. These consumers, once won, can be
transferred up the value chain from the initial low-priced
purchases to high-margin products and services.”
africa, too, is a collection of markets in which much remains
to be understood about consumers and their fast-evolving
preferences and priorities. Sifiso Falala, CEo of Plus 94 Research,
says businesses are aware of the risks of working in volatile
markets but have confidence that things are on the up. Growth is
World
Europe
North America
Asia Paci!c
Latin America
Africa
Middle East
0,7%
-1,4%
2,9%
1,6%
-0,1%
-1,2%
-1,2%
Globally, the manufacturing sector
is still the biggest consumer of
market research, followed by media
businesses and financial services.

Graph 3. five largest markets –Market share 2013 (US$ millions)
Japan
$ 1,843; 5% (-1)
over last year’s 19%); 9% expect no change (versus 21% the
previous year).
CLiCk AND CoLLECT
Technology continues to change the way that researchers carry
out their work, and it continues to lower the barriers to entry for
new kinds of service providers that are generating business
insights. The highest proportion of work being done online is in
Japan, where, in 2013, 46% of turnover came from online (up
from 40% in 2012). Bulgaria, a huge centre for outsourced
research, is the second-biggest online market (43% of the total is
online), followed by Sweden and Canada (both 38%), with the
netherlands rounding out the top five (36% of research is online).
The rise of big data–and a falling out of favour of the term
‘big data’ –has led to misunderstandings about what can and
what can’t be achieved with it. “as more people get their hands
on big data, they’ll see that, while you can now potentially prove
something that you had a hard time doing with traditional market
research,” says Google research manager Thomas Park. “But it
doesn’t pop out automatically. it’s really, really hard work to make
sense of that data.”
nick nyhan, digital coordinator and strategist for Kantar, says
the ‘making sense’ aspect of research is where the future of the
industry really lies; he thinks much of the meaning of real-time
data only comes from putting it into context –and often the
context of many years of other research. “That means that the
critical skills in the market research industry are more in demand
than they were before. it’s just that there’s more competition.”
The expansion and diversification of the research industry is
something that newcomers to the business say should be
promoted at universities, where the range of opportunities that a
research career can offer is still poorly understood. “Today’s
books and courses don’t even talk about online research or
qualitative research, so the perception that’s perpetuated is one
Jo Bowman
is an independent journalist based in the uK
Rest of the world
$ 12,242; 30% (+1)
France
$ 2,679; 7%
USA
$ 14,991; 37% (+2)
Germany
$ 3,468; 9% (+1)
United Kingdom
$ 5,065; 13%
Other
16% (+1)
Manufacturing
Wholesale and retail 44% (-2)
5% (-1)
Telecommunications
6% (+1)
Financial services
6%
Public sector
9%
Media
14% (+1)
Graph 4. Sources of research turnover 2013 (%)
that’s far from reality –paper-and-pen research, and calling
people up and doing surveys,” says Tanmay dhall, a qual
research consultant with TnS in dubai and board member of
Fringe Factory. Private-sector marketing and research
programmes, such as those run by Coca-Cola and nielsen, are
helping shed light on what the industry is really about, and some
smaller agencies are becoming active at the university ‘milk
rounds’ as they seek to attract sharp, talented graduates. dhall
says young people’s perceptions of research are slowly changing:
“There’s young blood in the industry which wants change and is
working for it. if we can communicate the variety of career
opportunities available, it will help us take a real step
forward.”
GLoBAL MARkET RESEARCh 2014
The only global analysis of market research spend
an ESoMaR industry Report
in cooperation with Bdo accountants advisors
now in its 26th year, the report includes:
• Global regional highlights and five-year trend data on 81 countries
• Country-level breakdowns of sources of turnover, spend by research
method, design and project type
• Expert insights into the changing needs of research clients and agencies
To see a preview and order the report, please go to
www.esomar.org/publications.
GloBal MaRKET RESEaRCH 2014 is free to ESoMaR members in PdF
format and can be downloaded in the MyESoMaR section of the website.

RESEARCH CHALLENgE
iSAAC ROgERS
Doing More with More
Multi-phase and hybrid studies yield greater depth
While single-phase consumer engagement still has its place, a new trend in global
marketing research is the rise of multi-part or hybrid research projects.

prior feedback and revisit the ideas with
the same participants who participated in
the first sessions.
as researchers, we can often forget
how unusual the focus group environment
can be for a respondent. a consumer is
asked to visit an office in a building they’ve
likely never entered, sit around a table
surrounded by a handful of strangers and
answer questions about products they use
at home–all while glancing uncomfortably
at reflections in a giant mirrored wall. While
an effective moderator can alleviate much
of this uneasiness, it can still be a tremen -
dous challenge to develop rapport, present
brand new concepts or ideas, moderate a
lively discussion and cover all the primary
topics in a 60- or 90-minute session.
Most researchers will quickly admit that
many, if not most, of their groups could
benefit from more time in discussion.
However, by the time the 90 minutes is up,
some participants are nearing the end of
their natural attention span, while others
must return to their lives, jobs and families
outside of market research.
However, we don’t live in a strictly face-to-
face world anymore. online qualitative
research platforms afford any researcher a
multitude of simple-to-use and flexible
solutions to craft a custom hybrid project
with relative ease.
REAChiNG fURThER foR iNSiGhTS
one key area where hybrid projects
succeed is their ability to easily carry a
conversation with consumers over an
extended period of time. Historically,
longitudinal qualitative projects were some
of the most costly and difficult research
methods. However, today’s digital
techniques provide a tremendous
advantage for longer term participant
engagements.
one of the most powerful applications
of hybrid approaches couples a face-to-face
session with a follow-up online
discussion days or weeks after the focus
group. This “debrief” session can often
yield amazing new insights that weren’t
captured in the first event. it allows
researchers to refine concepts based on
As greater and greater numbers of
developed and semi-developed
countries refine their internet
infrastructures and services,
digital research technologies are allowing
more global researchers to engage
consumers quickly, easily and affordably –at
a variety of times, in a range of settings and
long after they’ve left the focus group.
one of the most effective strategies
emerging today in global qualitative
research is the rise of multi-part or hybrid
research projects. Some researchers have
found this to be their “secret weapon” for
achieving the client goal of providing more
insights, faster, while at the same time
helping to keep project costs low.
The basic concept of multi-modal
research is fairly straightforward: instead of
relying on a single phase of consumer
engagement, such as a one- or two-hour
focus group session, a researcher instead
engages with the customer two or more
times in a variety of formats. in the past,
the concept of continuing the conversation
after the focus group, or perhaps
interviewing participants three or four times
during different periods in their path to
purchase, might have seemed like an
impossibility. The cost and logistics of
reconnecting with consumers in a strictly
face-to-face world limited our ability to
engage past a single focus group
experience.
“We can often forget how unusual the focus
group environment can be for a respondent.”

unique habits. Rather than walking “cold”
into a one-on-one interview with a stranger,
the moderator and participant were able to
continue their existing relationship during
their first face-to-face chat. The level of
rapport between them was high, as they’d
spent the past two weeks engaging and
getting to know one another in an online
discussion. This allowed the researcher to
engage in a frank and honest conversation
with the participant on a topic that is, for
some, a sensitive subject. in this case, the
researcher felt the level of accuracy in the
digital diary greatly exceeded a typical
paper journal, and the hybrid approach
meant a more comfortable discussion with
the consumers in the face-to-face setting.
A NEw DAy foR RESEARCh
There’s a lot of talk in our industry around
the challenges facing today’s researchers,
much of it seeming to imply or assume that,
as a group, we’re somehow unfit for the
future. it seems some pundits want to
argue that researchers aren’t up to the task
and that our industry is forever stuck in the
past.
That’s not how i see it. From where i sit,
i see a new day dawning for research.
Every day, i see more and more
researchers rising to action. Practitioners
across the globe are realising that today’s
digital tools, coupled with an existing
mastery of research methods, allow them
to gaze deeper into the consumer
experience and uncover fresh new insights.
With each bespoke project design, i’m
seeing creativity flourish and renewed
excitement in our industry. The one-size-fits-
all mold is breaking, and a new age of
mixed method, hybrid and truly custom-tailored
design is upon us.
participants will be willing and able to be
contacted–for very little additional effort or
incentive (typically, participants are paid
less than 50% additional honoraria for the
digital debrief). additionally, the cost of an
online webcam group or bulletin board
discussion is generally a small fraction of
the overall project cost.
CoNTExTUALiSiNG ThE PATh
To PURChASE
Hybrid qualitative methodologies are
gaining traction as a way to develop an
immersive understanding of the consumer
path to purchase and a more direct
mechanism to study real-world habits and
practices.
in the past, qualitative researchers
struggled to adequately capture a broad
consumer experience. Traditional single-phase
research often consisted of a single
interview or focus group in which the
participants recounted a decision-making
or buying process based largely on
individual recall. Realising the
shortcomings of relying on accurate
depictions from consumer memory,
qualitative researchers often relied on the
paper diary or journal method to more
adequately capture these events.
But what happens when a researcher
replaces that paper diary with a digital
tool? Take, for example, a recent project in
Southeast asia, in which the paper diary
was replaced with a mobile-enabled
qualitative discussion. For two weeks, 30
consumers documented each alcoholic
beverage they purchased or consumed via
a smartphone app, submitting hundreds of
photos and videos that captured their
purchase and consumption patterns.
during that two-week data-gathering
phase, participants could also log on to an
online conversation in which the moderator
created a rich dialogue about alcohol
trends.
after the two-week mobile data
gathering phase, the consumers were
invited to a mix of face-to-face sessions
and online individual webcam interviews
(depending on their proximity to a central
facility). The moderator used the
consumers’ individually generated content
and their actual usage photos, videos and
diaries to develop a custom-tailored
conversation based on each individual’s
This is where the debrief online session
comes in. instead of bidding farewell to
these respondents forever, you can instead
enrol them in a three-day online bulletin-board
discussion or invite them to a
webcam group a few days or weeks after
the focus group. You are provided an
opportunity to hear from the consumers
after the ideas presented in the groups
have gestated. Researchers tell countless
stories of product concepts that just didn’t
get traction in the groups –yet after a few
days’ thought, many participants begin to
see benefits (or concerns) they hadn’t
formulated during the short time in the
focus group.
The debrief sessions are a perfect
opportunity to revisit key discussion topics
that might have been short-changed in the
live sessions. in effect, you are given a
second chance to engage with these
respondents and cover content that was
skipped–or perhaps content that didn’t
even exist–at the time of the first phase.
How many times have you left a project
wishing you could go back and ask each
respondent a few more questions? How
many times has your client come to you
wanting to keep the respondents in the
group just a few minutes longer? if you’re
like most researchers, this is a frequent
occurrence.
The ease of joining one of these digital
conversations means that most, if not all,
isaac Rogers
is chief innovation officer for 20|20 Research in the
uSA

Marco Jeurissen

gLOBAL MARKET RESEARCH
LAuREnCE n. gOLD

’

The world’s largest 25 marketing research firms experienced modest revenue growth
in 2013, driven by syndicated services firms and held in check by changing currency
exchange rates and flat revenue per employee.
fEw fiRMS DRivE GRowTh
What drove growth this year? Seven all or mostly syndicated
firms –nielsen (including its acquisition arbitron), iMS, iRi, nPd,
comScore, J.d. Power and Video Research–accounted for 58%
of Top-25 revenues and had a combined growth rate of 4.1%.
The balance of 18 firms grew by 2.5%, just above the 1.7%
inflation rate. So syndicated firms primarily drove growth this
year, supported by their long-term contracts. However, the
differences are quite modest.
not all Top-25 firms shared in the overall gain: 14 firms on
this year’s list grew faster than inflation, the same number as last
year, including just three that grew by double digits. of the 11
remaining, eight experienced actual revenue declines.
in the past, smaller firms typically grew faster than larger
firms, and this is true for 2013 as well. among the five top firms,
Table 1: year-to-year Revenue Growth of Top-25 Research firms
Currency Effects/After WW
generic* + mA’s = Total inflation
2013 3.4% -0.1% 3.3% 2.0%
2012 2.6 NC 2.6 0.5
2011 4.1 1.6 5.7 3.0
2010 4.9 1.1 6.0 4.3
2009 -3.1 2.5 -0.6 -2.0
2008 3.9 2.9 6.8 3.5
2007 7.7 1.4 9.1 6.1
2006 5.1 3.5 8.6 6.4
2005 5.4 4.5 9.9 7.4
2004 4.8 1.1 5.9 3.4
* Generic excludes MAs (acquisitions or divestitures) and currency effects.
Note: Growth rates based on home country currencies.
Total growth of the Top 25 improved slightly over the
prior year, up 3.3% in 2013 (vs. 2.6% in 2012), but
remained well below the previous two years (at about 6%
each, following recovery from the worldwide recession)
as shown in Table 1. after adjusting for inflation, growth was
reduced to 2.0% and 0.5% for 2013 and 2012 respectively,
which together represents about a third of the growth of the
prior two years combined.
To understand why this happened, look to wide swings in
currency exchange rates versus the dollar over the last two years.
For example, the Japanese yen jumped nearly 24% and the
Brazilean real increased over 10% compared to the dollar in
2013. Conversely, the euro dropped over 9% and the British
pound declined nearly 2% versus the dollar in 2012. These
swings, when netted out, served to depress the Top-25 firms’
total growth rate over the past two years.
Mergers and acquisitions contributed as well, but much less
than in the years 2005–2009, which showed total growth of
nearly 10% per year. at the same time, currency fluctuations
during those earlier years had much less effect than in the past
two years. Still, Mas’ contribution to total growth was
cancelled out by the negative effect of currency exchange rate
changes.
Generic growth, which strips away the effects of both
currency fluctuations and Mas, reveals the underlying basic
business direction of the Top 25. its growth for the last two years
mirrors total growth but is less than years prior to 2012 when,
with some exceptions, generic growth averaged 4% to over 5%.
This current weakness reflects continued conservative
research spending by corporate buyers caused by worldwide
economic conditions: the slow recovery of the uS economy, a
European economy mired in recession with continuing debt and
banking problems, and slowing economies in asia Pacific
markets.

with economic conditions in both Europe and the uS but
nevertheless retained its 2nd place ranking. iMS is now reporting
full-firm revenues, as revealed by its new listing on the nYSE, and
moved to 3rd place. as a result, ipsos fell to 4th place and GfK to
5th place, each growing by less than 1%.
iRi retained its 6th-place ranking, after moving up two places
in 2012 with last year’s large organic growth. Westat, which
experienced a 17% growth rate after being flat last year, moved
up to 7th place with a large revenue gain. dunnhumby returned
to the list this year with an 8th-place ranking, while inTaGE
dropped two ranks to 9th due to large yen-to-dollar exchange
rate changes. nPd held its 10th-place ranking.
those with revenues over uS $1 billion each, revenues increased
3.0% organically (vs. 2.3% for the same firms last year). The
balance of 20 smaller firms grew at 4.9% (compared with 4.3% a
year ago).
ToP 25 RANkiNG ChANGES
Change in the rankings of Top-25 firms is a constant from year to
year, and 2013 is no exception.
among the 10 firms at the top of the rankings, nielsen once
again kept hold on 1st place–a status unchanged since the list
was first compiled–and accounted for 28% of the list’s revenues.
Kantar, whose revenue increased 1.6%, continues to grapple
Table 2: 2013 Top 25 Global Research organizations
Organization Headquarters parent Research- global percent Revenues From Outside
Country Only Research Change
Full-time Revenues2 from Home Country
Employees1 (uS$ millions) 20123 (uS$ in millions) Home Country
Nielsen Holdings New York Netherlands USA 36.700 $6.045,0 4,0% $2.850,4 47,2%
Nielsen Holdings New York Netherlands USA 35.400 5.569,0 3,9 2.844,2 51,1
Arbitron Columbia, Va. USA 1.300 476,0 5,8 6,2 1,3
Kantar* London Fairfield, Conn. U.K. 22.800 3.389,2 1,6 2.436,6 71,9
IMS Health Danbury, Conn, USA 10.000 2.544,0 6,1 1.609,0 63,2
Ipsos Paris France 15.536 2.274,2 0,8 2.116,9 93,1
GfK Nuremberg Germany 12.904 1.985,2 0,8 1.389,6 70,0
Information Resources Chicago USA 4.635 845,1 4,1 341,4 40,4
Westat Rockville, Md. USA 2.044 582,5 17,0 18,8 3,2
dunnhumby London U.K. 715 453,7 8,8 347,0 76,5
INTAGE Holdings** Tokyo Japan 2.527 435,5 6,5 24,2 5,6
The NPD Group Port Washington, N.Y. USA 1.282 287,7 5,4 85,4 29,7
comScore Reston, Va. USA 1.166 286,9 15,7 84,1 29,3
J.D. Power and Associates* Westlake Village, Calif. USA 738 258,3 2,5 85,4 33,1
IBOPE Group Sao Paulo Brazil 3.296 231,1 3,4 51,7 22,4
ICF International Fairfax, Va. USA 908 225,3 -6,0 53,3 23,7
Video Research** Tokyo Japan 414 204,0 -0,3
Symphony Health Solutions Horsham, Penn. USA 548 198,7 -1,3 2,2 1,1
Macromill Tokyo Japan 864 184,7 10,6 20,1 10,9
Maritz Research Fenton, Mo. USA 757 177,6 -6,0 38,7 21,8
Abt SRBI Cambridge, Mass. USA 1.138 172,8 -1,6 17,1 9,9
Decision Resources Group Burlington, Mass. USA 625 150,3 4,2 42,2 28,1
Harris Interactive New York USA 542 139,7 -0,7 53,6 38,4
ORC International Princeton, N.J. USA 494 122,0 -0,8 40,1 32,9
Mediametrie Paris France 705 106,1 2,0 14,9 14,0
You Gov London U.K. 524 101,4 6,0 71,3 70,3
Lieberman Research Worldwide Los Angeles USA 412 100,3 -1,5 32,3 32,2
Total 122.301 $21.501,3 3,4% $11.826,3 55,0%
* Estimated.
** For fiscal year ending March 2014.
1 Includes some non-research employees
2 Total revenues that include non-research activities for some companies are significantly higher.
3 Rate of growth from year to year has been adjusted so as not to include revenue gains or losses from acquisitions or divestitures.
Rate of growth is based on home country currency and excludes currency exchange effects and MAs.

• ownership is more concentrated. This is primarily a
consequence of amalgamation, the end result of hundreds of
acquisitions made over many years in many countries. Eight
firms, accounting for most of the Top-25 revenues, are publicly
listed companies in the uS, uK, France, Germany and Japan.
Four others are wholly owned subsidiaries of larger public or
private companies, with the balance privately held by
institutional investors, private equity firms or company
founders/top executives. Two companies did not provide
financial information (which was estimated for this report).
whAT’S NExT foR ThE ToP 25?
it is safe to assume the Top 25 will continue to grow in the near
term, but at a rate one-third to one-half of that prior to the
recession, given the persistently unsettled economic conditions
that continue to prevail around the world. Still, demand exists for
syndicated research firms as corporate buyers seek marketplace
understanding.
Where this leads the Top 25 in its longer term future is
uncertain, given that spending for market research is partially
discretionary and subject to continuing economic uncertainty.
Both syndicated and overlapping media research will continue
to be in demand, while the future of ad hoc survey research,
subject as it is to the whims of corporate buyers, remains cloudy.
Meanwhile, the Top 25 cautiously continues to adopt digital and
big data, which could be the driver of market research in the
future. Social media research has also been adopted by the Top-
25 firms, but how it will impact the future of these businesses
remains unclear.
Will Ma activity resume its pre-recession pace? in the past,
Top-25 firms have turned to Mas when they wanted to increase
their size. lately, however, they have concentrated on acquiring
small firms to satisfy local requirements. Ma activity will
contribute to growth when the big firms resume buying each
other.
Top-25 revenues were verified by each firm’s public record or third-party sources,
generally outside accounting firms, following compilation by uS market research
newsletter Inside Research. It was published in the American Marketing
Association’s Marketing News-magazine this year in August. It also compiles MA
activity in each of its issues.
among the remaining 15, three firms moved up at least two
ranks. Symphony Health Solutions moved from 19th to 16th
place, helped by rapid spending increases in uS healthcare. oRC
moved from 24th to 22nd with the full integration of its Marketing
Research Services acquisition. J.d. Power regained its 12th-place
ranking by fully recovering from revenue declines two years ago.
Video Research moved down two places due to currency
exchange rates, while lieberman Research fell four places to the
bottom of the list due to both a decline in revenues and the fact
that one of the new firms ranked above it on the list. decision
Resources Group is the second firm new to the list. displaced was
nikkei Research, whose revenues fell below the threshold, while
arbitron become part of nielsen.
MoRE ChANGES ThiS yEAR
looking deeper into the Top 25 reveals the following not-so-apparent
changes:
• The qualifying threshold is higher. a 2013 ranking required
revenue of uS $100 million, an increase of nearly uS $8 million
over last year. For the eight years following 2000, the threshold
ranged up and down between uS $42 million and uS $54
million, but in 2008 it began to rise to its present record high
level, which will no doubt continue to rise in the future.
• Mas declined. The number of Mas made by Top-25 firms
declined in 2013 by 67% to 21 (vs. 31) the year before. The big
acquisition in 2013 was nielsen’s buying arbitron, which
accounted for about 75% of total Top-25 Ma revenue. (The
top year for acquisitions was 2008, just before the start of of
the worldwide recession.) acquisitions were mostly small in
2013, which trend is in keeping with most firms’ strategy of
“backing and filling” internationally.
The top five firms (excluding iMS, which did not reveal its
acquisitions) made 14 of 21 Mas this year (or 67% of the total
by count). Kantar led the list with six, followed by GfK with three
and ipsos with two. nielsen also had two, including the big
arbitron buy.
• Productivity continues to be flat. in 2013, productivity averaged
uS $176,000 in revenue per full-time employee. Productivity
has been relatively flat over the last six years (despite a dip in
2009). More efficient and less costly software, more data
collection via the internet and more business-focused
management have all played a part.
Laurence N. Gold
is editor and publisher of Inside Research in the uSA
acquisitions were mostly small in
2013, which trend is in keeping
with most firms’ strategy of
“backing and filling” internationally.

BOuNDARIES
nOAH ROyCHOWDHuRy AnD niCHOLA kEnT-LEmOn
Scouting for growth
What is the best way to reach girls and young women for the World association of
Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WaGGGS) in Malaysia, Madagascar, oman, Poland and
St. Vincent and the Grenadines?

Research World 47 September

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