Market research has a problem: it costs too much, delivers too slowly, and still too often gets in the way of action.
Budgets that should fuel campaigns, new products, and growth are instead eaten up by surveys and analysis. Evidence is supposed to boost impact, not drain resources from the solution. The industry has boxed itself in by commoditising data collection. The bricks and mortar of polling; surveys, weighting, data cleaning; are too often treated as the end product. But bricks alone don’t build a house. The real value lies in the design, the architecture, the approach to how you build it.
By overcharging for the raw material, the industry under-delivers on insight. Consequently, the sector has developed something a poor reputation. It’s become too conservative, and too comfortable in old routines. While marketing embraced digital platforms, finance adopted fintech, and communications transformed through AI and automation, market research has tiptoed it’s way forward, clinging to legacy methods and manual processes.
To clients, market research increasingly looks like a laggard industry, too risk-averse and too slow to innovate. Just read any recent GRIT report, customers aren’t as satisfied with the service as they should be.
And yet the tools already exist to rewrite the playbook. Data collection, cleaning, and baseline analysis can now be automated with precision. Panel infrastructure and software can make the grunt work fast, cheap, and standardised. This should free up time and budget for what actually matters: sector expertise, advisory, and strategy. But instead, much of the industry still bills as if each dataset were a hand-crafted antique.
The consequences are serious. Smaller businesses are locked out, not because they don’t value evidence, but because the cost is disproportionate. They make product decisions and marketing bets without the security of evidence and insight; flying blind while larger competitors use even imperfect research to their advantage. The market research industry should be a compass for all businesses, not a luxury reserved for those with deeper pockets. No one entered this profession to be a spreadsheet mechanic. Researchers want to guide clients, to spot consumer shifts early, to help businesses navigate storms and seize opportunities. But too much talent is wasted on work that machines can now do better. It’s like asking surgeons to sharpen scalpels instead of performing life-saving operations.
The future is obvious. The market research industry must stop pricing itself like a bottleneck and start positioning itself as an accelerator. It must embrace automation, shed its conservative habits, and focus its value on interpretation, advisory, and speed. Businesses today operate in an environment of constant change. They don’t need more raw data; we’re swimming in it. They need radar systems that cut through the noise and point the way forward.
The industry can cling to the slow lane, or it can reinvent itself. But make no mistake: clients are watching, and they’ll reward those who deliver clarity and outcomes; not those who cling to process.
Author – Mike Turner – Co-founder & CEO