ABSTRACT
In the midst of the global economic meltdown of 2007-09, many marketers had a glum view of the near future; one of the few areas of marketing that retained some of its growth was market research. Global market research revenues reached $32 billion in 2008-an overall growth of 4.5 percent (net 0.4 percent) according to the ESOMAR Global Market Research Report. Five years later in 2013, global market research revenues increased to US$40.3 billion. The North American research market seems to have fully recovered from the economic downturn of recent years and is rewarded with the title of fastest growing region for the first time since 2000. In 2015 it is the USA, which is making up for sluggish performances in some of the world’s other large research markets. Growth amounted to 4.4 percent year-to-year and 2.9 percent after correcting for inflation. Performance in Europe was poor, with an absolute growth of 0.4 percent and a decline of 1.4 percent after inflation. More importantly to global marketers, Asia Pacific is the second of two regions that recorded positive growth for the year 2013 with 1.6 percent. Latin America, which was the best performing region in 2012, saw research turnover drop by 0.1 percent, impacted by inflation and declines for the region’s largest markets, Brazil and Mexico.1
