Global evolution of market research projects

The following article is an excerpt from ESOMAR’s Global Market Research 2024. This flagship report of ESOMAR, often dubbed as the “Bible of Market Research”, provides you with the most comprehensive overview of the state of the insights industry and the market research sector around the world using data collected by national research associations, leading companies, independent analysts, and ESOMAR representatives.

The funnel-like approach proposed in ESOMAR’s Global Survey 2024 allowed to isolate the portion of turnover related to market research practices i.e., full-service and market research services (qualitative and quantitative surveys including focus groups, expert interviews, and audience measurement) and fieldwork services (including sample, panel, and data services).

The two main types of projects commissioned in 2023 continued to be market measurement (14.3%) and CRM research/customer satisfaction (13.2%), which together account for more than a quarter of the projects carried out worldwide. As mentioned, changes in the methodology of the ESOMAR questionnaire make it difficult to analyse trends, but it should be noted that market measurement is back in first place, having lost out to CRM/customer satisfaction in 2019. After the various crises that affected many regions (COVID-19, wars, inflation, etc.), the need to assess market transformations prevailed in 2023. Against this backdrop, brands are also continuing to innovate, and new product development is the third most common type of project overall (11.4%).

Readers may notice that the share of spending on CRM systems/customer satisfaction and user experience projects has decreased slightly over the last couple of years. One potential reason could be clients conducting these types of projects internally (see ESOMAR’s Global Users and Buyers of Insights 2023 report), while the other, more plausible, reason is mathematical. By isolating the turnover related to market research practices, the model is able to paint a more precise picture of the spending on these project types rather than, as was done until last year, factoring in the entire insights turnover, which would otherwise include non-project-based turnover.

Slightly behind, usages and attitudes, user experience, media audience/research, and advertising/brand tracking each account for less than 10% of projects (9.7%, 8.7%, 7.8%, and 7.5%, respectively), but advertising/brand tracking is regaining momentum after the slump experienced during the crisis years.

As usual, opinion research/polling is less important in terms of turnover (5.4%) than in terms of the sector's visibility and reputation, even though the exclusion of self-service from the 2023 data and the election campaigns in several countries have increased its share of projects compared with previous years.

The main types of projects occupied quite different positions by region: market measurement is by far the most important type in Africa (29%), Latin America (22.3%), the Middle East (19.8%), and Asia (14.7%). On the other hand, it only comes fourth in Europe (8.7%) since 2023 can still be considered a year of transformation rather than stabilisation in several European countries, where new product development (20.1%), advertising/brand tracking (15.1%), and CRM/satisfaction (10.4%) are more frequent. While CRM/satisfaction (17.8%) and market measurement (16.6%) were in the lead in North America, this region stands out for the high weighting of media audience/research and user experience (13.3% and 13.2%, respectively).

Finally, Opinion accounted for 10% or more of projects in emerging regions, depending on election calendars and polling regulations: Middle East (16.5%), Latin America (12.2%), and Africa (9.5%).