The firm surveyed more than 100 members of the Institute of Direct Marketing who director Andrew Dalglish described as “big hitters” responsible for B2B marketing budgets of around £34m.

Forty-six per cent of respondents in the online survey said that they planned to increase their research spend over the coming year, compared to 31% who said it would remain the same and 23% who planned to reduce it.

Respondents said that “research organisations need to develop tools to measure the impact of social media”, with 71% saying that social media was “highly relevant” to B2B and 70% planning to increase investment in this area.

Dalglish (pictured) said that this definition of social media covered websites like LinkedIn and “influential blogs”, rather than the likes of Facebook. “Everybody knows it is there,” he said, “but nobody knows exactly what to do with it.”

Elsewhere in the survey, 71% of respondents said that they have shifted their spend to activities that directly generate revenues rather than those that build the brand and 75% said that they expect the economic downturn to last between 12 and 24 months.

The full executive summary of the survey can be found here.