Buyer-Side Trends: Research, Analytics, and Market Shifts
By Nick Lowery
The annual GRIT Business & Innovation Report is your essential resource for key trends shaping the research, analytics, and insights industries. Innovation is central to our field, and the GRIT Business & Innovation Report highlights the leading topics and contributors. Each year, Greenbook delivers in-depth reports that uncover valuable trends crucial to the success of any business.
Research vs. Analytics Roles
The research and analytics segments diverge in their roles and approach to data. Researchers primarily collaborate with full-service providers, managing multiple projects, while analytics professionals concentrate on direct data analysis and consult with data providers. Furthermore, analytics teams are usually larger in scale, with many organizations employing over 20 insights professionals, in contrast to the more compact research teams..
Shifts in Buyer-Side Focus
Historically, research and insights groups dominated the buyer-side focus in GRIT, but this has shifted significantly, with data and analytics now representing 69% of the focus. Marketing’s role has decreased to just 10%, due to its integration with other functions. Meanwhile, R&D’s involvement has risen from 3% to 8%, showing the growing influence of technical functions.
Sector and Market Engagement
The sectors served by research and analytics professionals differ as well. Researchers are more likely to work in consumer non-durables (CPG), while analytics professionals have a stronger presence in industries like financial services, technology, and healthcare. Analytics professionals tend to work across an average of 2.6 markets, while researchers focus on 1.6. Analytics teams are also more likely to be part of organizations with over 100 insights professionals
Changes in Decision-Making Influence
The decision-making process has seen a shift over time. Research groups continue to be key decision-makers but with a reduced influence (65%). Analytics groups, on the other hand, have gained significant decision-making power, leading 45% of decisions. Marketing remains influential, especially within analytics (58%), while the executive team plays a larger role in analytics (83%) than in research (34%). Analytics professionals also report recognizing more key influencers (4.4) compared to researchers (2.8), reflecting the growing complexity of analytics teams.
Top Priorities for Improving Insight Project Impact
Over the past few years, GRIT has consistently identified key factors that improve the impact of insight projects, with the top three priorities for buyers remaining unchanged: providing actionable results for executives, aligning work with business objectives, and making impactful recommendations. Directly involving key business stakeholders, which was ranked fifth, dropped to sixth last year. Two communication-related factors also rose in importance: concise, direct reporting moved up from seventh to fourth, while effective storytelling shifted from fourth to fifth. Overall, buyers have consistently prioritized business focus, stakeholder engagement, and communication, though reducing costs is not seen as a primary factor for improving project impact, even though it may be a concern for insights staff.
If you are interested in diving into the report more on your own, you can download the full report here.
How W5 can help
At W5, we work to provide insights and solutions which can help provide value to any business. We strive to push the boundaries of marketing research and bring fresh prospectives to fit client needs. Contact us to bring your marketing research dreams to reality.