Careers in Market Research - Part 2

BY- ABHIK GUPTA

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This is Part-2 of Careers in Market Research, Part-1 can be found here

As always, the provider and the receiver provide alternative career options. In my mind however, it is about the inclination of the individual – some of us take pleasure in the process and hence specialize in providing the service while others are assimilators who see greater joy in the utility of the service. Both are equally important, and actually part of the same team.

 What links all the opportunities I have listed above is the individuality of the solution, focused and tailored to the problem and organization.

Over time, the researcher found commonality in marketing problems. Syndication has helped in addressing the need for setting industry benchmarks and standards over a time continuum thus catering to a multitude of marketing needs. For e.g. each company wants to know the market share that it has in a particular industry.  There has to be a provider who can credibly provide this information accepted by all players in the industry. This activity necessitates continuous monitoring of a large number of retail points so that a credible industry solution can be provided.  Similarly, if you are to measure television viewership or newspaper readership in order to plan your media campaign, it needs to come from a common industry accepted source which can be the basis of planning between the advertiser and channel. Thus a single source or research becomes the basis of marketing decision making and accepted as a standard methodology by all. Syndication and this business model led to the growth of the largest companies in the market research industry today like Nielsen in retail and audience measurement, several others like TNS in consumer panel research etc.

The nature of the solution is not very different i.e. the market researcher still diagnoses the problem or advises the client based on a marketing problem, it is just that the data source is common and large. Typically, these are multi-billion dollar investments by corporations which have grown with the marketing industry. Retail Panels, Consumer Panels, TV audit panels, readership surveys etc. require large sample sizes to be statistically valid and therefore require large investments to provide robust solutions.   The size and complexity of the offering deserves a degree of specialization and therefore is another career opportunity within market research.

The need for basic information in a usable format, preferably with interpretation and commentary has become important in todays’ breathless world. While we are racing against time, success or failure is often determined by the speed at which I could access information and take decisions. Often a business decision is connected to the larger economic environment or industry analysis. The emergence of the technology industry saw the rise of companies like Gartner, the auto industry swears by JD Powers, economic information institutions like ‘The Economist’ have business verticals which develop economy or industry reports which are used baseline information for planning. There are also companies which specialize in analyzing and collating information on companies, Reuters being one of them. Connectivity and the internet world as aided the birth of several online options which are vying for a piece of this developing revenue stream. Today, it is definitely a viable career option with more and more needs being uncovered and information accessible in a connected world.  

(To be continued….)