Marketing Research Industry - Update

Market Research Industry Overview The global market research industry : was approximately $12BN dollars in 2006. In 2006, the industry is composed of approximately 65,000 market research jobs with nearly 35,000 in the United States. Historically, the market research industry has grown at approximately 5.1% per year. The industry is composed of two large segments including syndicated research and custom research.

Syndicated Research Syndicated research includes reports that are written once, typically by a marketing research analyst, and sold multiple times. Syndicated research also includes data that is collected and sold multiple times. Common examples include supermarket scanner data sold by A.C. Nielsen and Information Resources, prescription data sold by IMS, radio listening data sold by Arbitron and television viewership data sold by Nielsen Media. Frequently, this class of research is called "secondary" as it is not commissioned by any single client. Measured in dollars, syndicated research represents approximately one-third of the global market research industry.

Custom Research The balance of the global market research industry, $8BN, is classified as custom market research. Custom research is designed and executed to meet a specific client's objective and is often called "primary" research. Because the research is paid for by the client, the results are proprietary and not resold. Custom research is itself composed of two segments, qualitative and quantitative research.