There is a conception that panel companies and research agencies are divided by a Chinese Wall that no one crosses. Panel companies take only care of low added-value data collection, when research agencies focus high added-value consulting and provide insights. Panel companies have been careful to spread this idea that they are partners with research agencies, not competitors. Greenfield Online’s (SRVY) big break only started when they got rid of their consulting arm and started to claim loud and clear that they were friends.
However, if you look at the biggest names in the Top Honomichl (TNS, Kantar, Ipsos…), you realize that a significant portion of their income comes from pure data collection, not pure “insights consulting”. They all sell pure data collection services (sometimes to other research agencies), and sometimes sample only. On the other hand, panel companies are increasingly competing with research agencies by providing end clients with “fieldwork services”. It may not be the case for all of them (SSI is a notable exception), but look at what Research Now or Toluna are doing across the Atlantic and how successfully they are growing.
I think that the industry is fooling itself by excluding research suppliers in their rankings. We may be marketing experts, but for our own industry we seem to mix up positioning statements and actual services… In 2006, I would like to see Greenfield Online, Survey Sampling and SPSS in the Global top 25 Honomichl.
Hi Olivier,
There’s a much bigger scandal going on: massively declining response rates, and, of course, declining quality of research participants. Research firms are trying to act like market experts to their marketer clients, and the truth is that most research firms are experiencing the same crisis they are trying to help their marketers solve: audiences increasingly not interested in having anything to do with such intrusions.
And here’s AdAge’s most recent report on the issue: http://adage.com/article?article_id=112237
In an increasingly attention-scarce world, is the disruptive, interceptive model of consumer insight extraction among commodity panels really sustainable? I don’t think so.
Cheers,
Max