THE NETHERLANDS – The market research sector has grown 1% between 2016 and 2017 to be worth $46bn in the US, according to Esomar’s Global Market Research Report.
The rate of growth has fallen since last year when it was 2.3% after inflation – the fastest rate of growth since 2010. However, when combined with ‘newer’ research methodologies, such as data analytics, the annual global turnover for research and insight in 2017 was $76bn, compared with $71.5bn in 2016.
There are regional differences with Europe the only market to see a decline as net growth fell to -0.4%. The UK grew by 0.3% although its share of the global market research market fell 17% to 14%.
The Middle East and Asia Pacific were the two fastest growing regions with the Middle East up 2.9% and Asia Pacific up 2.6% year on year.
Within APAC China continues to dominate with 6% growth. North America saw an improvement in growth from 1% in 2016 to 1.5% in 2017.
The five largest individual markets were:
Market Turnover ($m) % of global mrkt
US 20,230 44
UK 6,498 14
Germany 2,766 6
France 2,362 5
China 1,965 5
Finn Raben, director general of Esomar said: “Despite forecasts that the research profession is in decline, this year’s Global Market Research report shows that our industry continued to grow in 2017, albeit a little more slowly.
“Promisingly, we see growth both from within the traditionally defined research sector, but also from the newer, expanded definition of our industry – continued evidence that the demand for actionable, evidence-based data and insight remains strong.”
