The tenth annual Confirmit Market Research Technology and Innovation Survey, conducted with 240 market research firms globally and produced by meaning ltd, also revealed that mobile technology, social media and multi-modal research had been the most positive technological developments in research over the past decade.

The report also noted that there has been a significant shift by research companies towards working with businesses on voice of the consumer (VoC) and customer experience management (CEM) programmes.

Other key findings are:

• 70% of firms now undertaking some VoC or CEM work
• Data privacy a major disrupter to collecting large amounts of data
• Web remains strong for data collection; CATI decreasing

Tim Macer, managing director at meaning said: “The research industry clearly is adapting to the new data-rich, ‘always on’ landscape that we find ourselves in today. VoC is a natural place for research companies to be, but it will not be credible or sustainable if the industry does not embrace innovative methods to deliver a more holistic and integrated product. 

“There are noticeable gaps in provision when it comes to integrating research with non-MR sources of data, and in dealing with the explosion of comment and other unstructured data.”

The full survey can be downloaded here.