Which Of The GRIT Top 50 Market Research Companies Are Perceived To Be Most Innovative By Clients?

As part of the last round of the GreenBook Research Industry Trends Study we asked respondents to name the companies that they consider to be the most innovative. The result was a list of 50 market research firms that are perceived to be the most innovative. You can find our analysis of the results in the GRIT Report.

In preparing for the next wave of GRIT (coming this month!) I’ve been going back into the data to look for interesting trends or insights that could inform the questions we want to explore in the next phase of the study. It occurred to me that a little extra analysis on these companies could be interesting, so below is a table that shows their total mentions, absolute rank, and the mentions broken out by Suppliers and Clients. Take a look:

So that is the list of Top 50 Market Research companies perceived to be most innovative by both suppliers and clients. It is an interesting list and every company here deserves kudos for their efforts to brand themselves in the consciousness of the industry as being innovative!

Now let’s have a little fun. Granted that the sample skewed heavily to suppliers, but let’s apply the same standard of at least 4 mentions in order to qualify and just look at the firms mentioned by clients. We drop from 50 companies down to only 16!  Here is what that condensed list looks like:

A few things jump out to me:

• 3 companies originally in the Top 10 drop off: Peanut Labs, iTracks, and 20/20. No big surprise there; those firms mostly serve other suppliers. It does indicate that clients are not paying much attention to firms that simply provide enabling technology or resources.
• 6 companies move up: iModerate, Maritz, QualVu, Affinnova, Neurofocus, and Vovici. Congratulations; your branding efforts on the client side are working!
• Of the 16 total companies, we have 8 of the biggest full service suppliers, 3 MROC providers, 1 text analytics specialist, 2 technology-based qualitative firms, 1 neuromarketing firm, and 1 concept optimization leader. That is quite a diverse group of firms.

I think this list can tell us a lot. Obviously the big firms achieved their status through extensive marketing activities; big companies have big marketing budgets. What about the rest? Here is where things get interesting: the other eight are all leading providers in delivering innovative solutions to the industry. All are young companies, all are technology driven firms, and every single one of them is growing like crazy.

Do you see the trend? These smaller, innovation driven firms are achieving brand recognition comparable to the largest global full service suppliers. They don’t have the same budgets, so that tells me that their marketing messages are sticking with client-side researchers, and an integral part of those messages is the positioning of offering new, unique, and effective solutions to business intelligence issues.

My primary takeaway here is that clients are looking for innovation and companies that can communicate that effectively are winning business as a result. As we all look at this list, that lesson should be foremost in our minds; innovation isn’t just a  buzzword, it can be a primary business driver.

Congratulations to each of the firms that made the list. We’ll revisit this particular question in the fall and it will be interesting to see how the list changes as other firms get the message and act accordingly.

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