The report is based on nearly 1,600 interviews with insight buyers and providers across 76 countries and discussed topics including: adoption of emerging methods, sample quality, respondent engagement and the use of non-traditional data sources.

The results also revealed that while clients are mostly satisfied with how market research suppliers conduct research, they are less satisfied when it comes to consulting skills such as understanding their business or business issues and reporting results and recommending actions. 

Another finding is that mobile surveys, online communities and unstructured data analysis (such as social media and text analytics) are now mainstream and no other ‘breakout stars’ have appeared to challenge them. The use of non-primary research data sources is shown to be growing, but it’s so far unclear as to whether internet of things, web analytics and internal business intelligence teams will be part of most researchers’ tool kit. 

The data also suggests that now is a good time to be a designer, data scientist, business strategist or social media expert, as these are the most in demand skills for the year ahead. 

The full report can be found here.