GRIT Report: Top innovators, and some revealing disagreements on research's future

In the latest GreenBook Research Industry Trends (GRIT) report for Q1-Q2, we're proud to report that we were again voted one of the top 50 innovators in the industry, up twelve places from last year!

In addition to ranking the top market research innovators, some interesting sentiments came to light:

Suppliers and clients seem to be more or less on the same page when it comes to increasing automation in their market research, although there's plenty of room to further expand automation adoption.

Clients and research providers (full service as well as sample providers) agree on matters of mobile-friendliness, going easy on respondents with survey length, and ensuring that samples meet clients' standards. On the other hand, clients are understandably less enthused about getting charged extra for surveys that are mobile-unfriendly. Interestingly, clients seem to think of themselves as relatively self-sufficient on survey design, while sample providers prefer to nip any potential fielding problems in the bud by being more proactive with questionnaire design consultation.

When determining best practices for a market research study, there weren't too many surprises: be clear, provide actionable insights, demonstrate value, and use diverse approaches and sources. As always, when it comes to insights, unassailable quality of data and analysis remains king.

Suppliers seem to be more optimistic about market research spend than buyers, regardless of region. Would this be because buyers are putting more of their insight-seeking dollars into areas that aren't considered traditional market research, such as mining internal databases? Or are companies too financially pinched in our 'new normal' economy to spend more on market research in general? It's hard to say from this current report, but time may tell.

Research buyers and suppliers are mostly aligned in terms of educating tomorrow's researchers: they should learn critical thinking, how to turn insights into actions, and the art of data storytelling. Remarkably, buyers and suppliers do seem to diverge on the topic of data science: buyers want future researchers to be adept data scientists, considering this a top-3 trait, while research suppliers didn't make this a priority at all. Given the increasing focus by brands on data mining (GRIT also mentions automation), research suppliers may want to get in on the action by providing relevant data-science offerings.Be sure to check out the full GRIT Report for a much deeper dive into the most recent findings!