More In House Research?

We seem to be seeing lots and lots of client-side researchers being laid off lately, so a story in yesterday's Daily Research News caught my attention stating that many companies are bringing more research in house. This conflicts with other reports I have seen, so it will be interesting to see how it all shakes out through the rest of 2009. Certainly activity is picking up, but summer is coming so stay tuned.


Excerpt: Research suppliers may see declines in 2009 revenue as more clients prepare to take a proportion of their online research in-house, predicts an industry survey conducted earlier in the year.

The survey, conducted online in February among senior research practitioners and co-sponsored by online-oriented companies Cambiar, MRops and Peanut Labs, suggests that the decline in research industry revenues in 2009 may be higher than suppliers are expecting. While clients are anticipating that budgets may be flat to falling, the fact that they intend to do more in-house suggests that there will be less work for suppliers of research.

In 2009, the overall survey respondent base projects a market increase of 1.1%. However, results from clients give a less positive picture: project expenditures on research range from flat (MR functions in marketing companies) through to a decline of 3%+ (other research buyers), to one of 9% (ad agencies). Data collection companies project a decline of just over 2%.

Read the rest here.

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