It turns out that not all trade associations are what we may think they are – fighters for truth, justice, etc. Some exist for the benefit of its members only, rather than for the benefit of the industry as a whole, with the members reaping the benefits thereof. Continue reading »

The estimable Larry Gold and Jack Honomichl of Inside Research just published the 2012 Honomichl Top 50 Report (the 39th edition!), which is the perennial benchmark that the research industry uses to measure financial success. What does it tell us about the possible future of the industry? Continue reading »

Ah Conference Season! That time of year when all of the myriad organizations within the market research space all vie for the attention, dollars, and attendance of everyone in the industry. For those of us who tend to get invited to participate in these things a lot one of the critical questions we have to ask is which organization has a mission that I want to support and will also best serve my business interests. Continue reading »

It’s that time again folks! Analysis and preparation for publishing the latest iteration of the GRIT report is just about complete. As usual, I am so excited about the great findings in the study that I just can’t wait to share them with all of my colleagues in the industry, so here is another sneak peek at what we found out. Continue reading »

You can tell it’s almost Autumn; the days are getting a bit shorter, cooler weather is creeping in (slowly, but surely) and there is a flurry of activity as everyone prepares for many of the big MR industry conferences and events: AMA, ESOMAR, NewMR and TMRE. Things are no different here: I am grateful to have been asked to participate in all of them, plus a few smaller ones. I’m looking forward to each for different reasons, so I thought I’d do a little rundown of the events I’m going to be involved with and why I’m excited by them. Here they are! Continue reading »

MRWeb reported today about the positive news contained within the Honomichl Report about the recovery of the Global 25, and as I pointed out previously the story is mixed at best, with some true organic growth but most recovering to 2009 levels, and a few declining further. I love the work that Jack and Larry do, but I am reminded once again that this is only a snapshot of a segment of the MR space and although helpful, it is incomplete. Continue reading »

All in all, it’s been a pretty challenging decade for marketers. The role of the CMO is being diminished; traditional brand channels are being marginalized. And the CEO has seemingly fallen in love overnight with social media alternatives. And what’s bad for marketing should be bad for marketing research. After all, we are merely a supporting act for the marketing department. Continue reading »

As we head into the long weekend, I have six items I wanted to post about and not enough time to do full blown posts for all of them if I still want to enjoy at least some of my long 4th of July weekend. So, I hope you won’t mind that I’m going to take four of those items and put them into this “odds & ends” post. They really do fit well together, so here are four “mini posts” on surveys, social media, and punditry. Continue reading »

To celebrate our 1st Anniversary and continue building on the platform of delivering value to the industry we’re rolling out two new features that we think you’ll enjoy: a bi-weekly newsletter and a badge system. Continue reading »

Recently she has been working with the AMA on a qualitative study concerning the future of market research, and I had the honor and privilege of being asked to share my thoughts on that topic. Since this is also the focus of my presentation at the Technology Driven Market Research event in 2 weeks I found myself diving pretty deep and for the first time really collecting all of my ideas in one place. Frankie titled the piece: Lenny Murphy shares his Thoughts on the Bumpy Future of Market Research Continue reading »