In the 30 market research predictions some professionals have done for 2019 (in a large article published in the GreenBook blog), innovation is a common denominator. According to them, technology companies will continue to steal market share from traditional research agencies; there will be a boom in the demand for consumer insights since the market demands a more holistic view of the consumer; social listening, AI and big data will continue to be important forces that the client-side world will continue to grapple with.
The barriers among the research industry and the analytic industry will start to fall away this year, in the opinion of Karina Besprosvan, DataStoryteller, Insight & Innovation/Consumer Behavior at Sony Pictures Entertainment. "We will smoothly become one bigger and modern industry, giving us the advantage of melting the best of both worlds".
"The most forward-looking brands and agencies have shaken off doubts about the use of social data for market research, and old beliefs that online audiences can be monolithic”, says Davide Berretta, VP of marketing at Pulsar, the audience intelligence tool and strategy consultancy. According to Berretta, “Today they're applying sophisticated tools, artificial intelligence, and the best research methods to social conversation data in order to surface new user behaviors, language and feedback, and then personalizing their marketing around key audience segments".
At Audiense we have worked closely with some of the big companies and agencies in this industry, so we wanted to add depth to who they really are, who influences them, the most relevant organizations, what moves them…
We identified a social audience composed of people, institutions and agencies that include #MRX, "market research" or "market researcher" in their biography. By analyzing these profiles with our Audience Intelligence report, we were able to identify six main segments, among which there is only one that represents one of the 10 largest market research companies in the world: Kantar.
This gif gives us hints of the interconnection between the segments: the Kantar/WPP community, for example, is not followed by any group although it does follow the segments of Digital Marketing and Euromonitor. The core audience of MR on the other hand is followed by all the other segments, however it seems to be somewhat disconnected from them, following only members of the Digital Marketing group.
We have found some interesting findings:
The main community of Market Research represents almost 50% of the audience that we are dealing with today, so we decided to investigate this segment a little more to discover that among other things:
Using the Audience Influencers Report we have been able to find almost 20,000 influencers for the Market Research audience in question. When analyzing our data we have discovered that there are some common profiles that influence both the main audience and its segments and subsegments.
In general, the Insights Association, ESOMAR and Research Live are the top reference organizations in the sector. On the other hand, Dr. Annie, Ray Poynter and Leonard Murphy are among the most influential professionals.
TOP influencers for the MR audience
As we have said some profiles are repeated if we look at the influencers for the segments, but more relevant and unique influencers emerge for each group compared to the total audience. For example:
Top influencers for the Kantar/WPP segment
Top influencers for the Euromonitor segment
Top influencers for the Ipsos (Innovation) subsegment
If you want to identify the best influencers for your brand, try Audiense Insights. Request your demo NOW and discover who they are!
Pic by Tyler Lastovich on Unsplash.