Finding Your Market Research Partner

The market research industry suffers from a surplus of riches despite significant consolidation at the top over the past two decades: The number of providers is vast, provider source books are incomplete, and evaluation criteria and standards are wildly variable. All of this drives up the cost of finding a high-quality vendor. Our 19 vendor and user company interviews indicate that market research professionals who succeed at navigating and contracting vendors in this space do so by both maintaining a reservoir of trusted vendors and constantly networking to keep fresh. By maintaining this activity at a low level throughout the year and limiting vendor qualification presentations to once or twice per year, you can minimize the effort required to stay on top of this issue.