Clients and Smaller Firms May Be Most Optimistic?
One of the members, Bret Goble, of the 4000+ strong “Next gen Market Research” group I moderate on LinkedIn approached me with a request to run a poll on the site. I typically don’t allow surveys/polls in the group, because there are frankly way too many survey monkey’s out there.
However, I thought the idea of asking a simple question about market sentiment among the researchers sounded like a good idea. The question I asked was:
Within the next month I expect market research activity to
A. Increase
B. Stay about the same
C. Decrease
The poll was then posted in the Next gen Market Research Group on LinkedIn. We may possibly repeat this in a month or two if there is interest. Below are the results.
About half of market researchers expect things to stay the same. However, five in two are optimistic!
“C-Level & VP” executives seem most optimistic. Interestingly “Owners” who are usually optimistic by nature are most conservative. Perhaps they have already been hit hard and are afraid to get their hopes up? I’m not sure which of these two groups is more credible.
In terms of size, both Enterprise and small firms are most optimistic. This seems to prove what I have been suspecting. Contrary to some of the articles I’ve seen lately which claim clients should cozy up to their long time suppliers in these hard times, the opposite and more logical is happening. Larger clients are seeking out value among smaller suppliers which have less overhead and can offer more at a lower price. This should allow Enterprise firms to conduct more projects.
Business Development, and Sales are most optimistic. They are the front line so they should know if things are changing before anyone else.
Optimism decreases with age.
Not sure how useful gender is in this case.
Let me know if you found this useful and would be interested in a followup?
Tom
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5 responses so far ↓
1 Gary Austin // May 28, 2009 at 4:11 am
I don’t think the data from this one question proves your hypothesis that “Larger clients are seeking out value among smaller suppliers which have less overhead and can offer more at a lower price.” As a researcher I would want to see more evidence from other sources. It may be that Enterprise and small companies are generally more optimistic as it only takes a couple of business wins to make a real impact on their businesses, something that can happen in the short-term while larger businesses will take longer to turn round.
2 Tom H C Anderson // May 28, 2009 at 7:59 am
Hi Gary, no it doesn’t prove that. Something I’ve started noticing with my own co. Anderson Analytics, but more than that it seems to make sense. Best way to get more for your research dollar. Would love to get some other data on this if there is any.
3 Geza Kerekes // May 31, 2009 at 9:01 am
Hi guys,
I have recently conducted an online survey among the members of MarketResearchAgencies.eu, and found also that MR suppliers are optimistic: 70% of those who had losses in the past 6 months expect increase in their turnover for the next 6 months. Still, the majority of the respondents think that the MR industry is being hit hard by the crisis.
You can see the full report here:
http://www.marketresearchagencies.eu/Survey/Default.aspx
Note, that MR agencies from the USA are underrepresented in the sample.
4 Cathy Harrison // May 31, 2009 at 8:35 pm
When I started working in a corporation a few years ago, we awarded quantitative projects to large, full-service vendors but over time took almost all research in-house. Occasionally we would farm out pieces of a project if we required complex survey programming or advanced analytics. A large corporation across the street was moving in the same direction. A third large company in the area will not consider large research suppliers, instead relying on a pool of very small firms or independent contractors. Earlier this year, I was looking for full-time work but found that most companies now prefer to hire freelance support. It’s enough to keep me very busy.
5 “Get actionable data in just three easy steps” – a review of LinkedIn Polls « Datasets // Jun 4, 2009 at 10:17 am
[...] Thankfully, Tom Anderson, the founder of NGMR, reposted the survey under his name and the responses soared to 183 (write up and results are posted on his blog). [...]
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