Bought to you by Deltek, ESOMAR and ADIA Top 5 Critical Steps to Make Your Research and Insights Firm More Profitable Bought to you by Deltek in association with ESOMAR and ADIA The pandemic: risk or renaissance for the insights sector? To those who didn’t get the memo, the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that adapting to digital methods is key to thriving in today’s market research and insights sector. According to ESOMAR’s annual Global Market Research Report (GMR), the industry grew an enviable 8% in 2019. The trend towards greater use of technology was already apparent back then, with 11.5% growth for tech-enabled research compared to 4.3% growth for more traditional research methods. When the lockdown first hit in March 2020, it prevented face-to-face research and forced people to work from home. Many researchers were very pessimistic as projects were cancelled or put on hold. ESOMAR’s Insights in times of COVID-19 study published last May predicted the US$89.9 billion industry would shrink by up to 22% due to widespread uncertainty. One might have expected that investment would also shrink, but the reverse actually happened. According to a Cambiar 2020 study, investment in the sector increased by 61% in 2020, as venture capital markets viewed services such as consumer understanding as essential for coping with the evolving situation. According to the study, tight budgets forced clients to turn to technology to get the insights they needed faster and cheaper. This has meant that many technology-enabled insights companies have prospered. The investment growth is reflected in ESOMAR’s latest GMR Report, which shows that whilst the traditional market research sector shrank by 3% in 2020, the tech-enabled industry grew by a remarkable 10%. Any firm that has not yet adapted to online data collection has had to pivot fast to working remotely, and this has further accelerated the ongoing shift to digital methodologies. In this whitepaper, we talk to members of ESOMAR and ADIA, including winners of awards for innovation and operational excellence, about which practices help companies to flourish in uncertain times. These interviews highlight five steps that are essential to boosting resilience and profitability.
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