By Jan Willem Knibbe

Facial recognition is ubiquitous and new applications are emerging on almost a weekly scale. Just think about Apples’ animojis, tagging people on Facebook or Windows 10 Hello to login to your computer without a password, not to mention applications that are used by security professional to identify people in a crowd.

We asked the research community what they wanted our industry to have for Christmas and here’s what they had to say!

By Robert Heeg, RW Journalist

Ipsos’ acquisition of four major GfK divisions made market research headlines last summer. Ipsos founder Didier Truchot explains how the move fits into his company’s plans to grow as a global insights leader.

In a deal worth €105 million Ipsos acquired four global divisions of GfK’s custom research business this year: Customer Experience, Experience Innovation, Health and Public Affairs. As a consequence, almost 1000 GfK professionals will join Ipsos in 25 countries, including major markets such as China, Germany, UK and USA. The acquired businesses will have an estimated revenue of over €200 million in 2018, with EMEA contributing to around 55% of the revenues and the Americas to 39%.

We asked Didier Truchot, Ipsos’ founder, chairman and CEO, about the prime reasons behind this acquisition.

“They fit well within our organisation. We are currently developing a project called Total Understanding, which is about deploying capabilities and services all over the world for the benefit of our local and glocal clients. This deal is for us a way to reinforce our position in certain services. We believe that this deal will make us stronger in these four areas, bringing us more resources, clients and revenue. For us it’s an interesting tactical opportunity. We think for Ipsos to be larger, with more people, more talent, is a good move. It’s that simple.”

How quickly do you think Ipsos can integrate the almost 1000 GfK professionals in 25 countries?

Ipsos is a company with nearly 17.000 employees. Welcoming another 1000 is of course a project in itself, but it is not as huge a challenge as when we had 10.000 employees and added 6000 Synovate people when we took over that company (in 2011, ed.). That was a much larger and more complicated project. Take for example the UK, where we will now add 100 employees to the 1300 we already have. I’m not saying that it’s not significant but it certainly won’t destabilise our company.

If you’re an ESOMAR member you can read the full article in MyESOMAR in the digital copy of Research World. You can also download the full report here. If you’re not a member of ESOMAR you can join and receive a free copy of Research World 6 times a year or alternatively you can sign up for a subscription of the magazine in our publications store.

By Xabier Palacio

The GRBN has released the 2018 Global Top 25 Report, an overview of the largest 25 research and data analytics companies in 2017. This year’s report showed an increase in revenue of 5.9%, in part driven by the extraordinary growth of just one company, Gartner Research (+33%). Without this player the Top 25 would have reported a combined growth of 3.7%, slightly lower than for 2016. All in all, total revenue increased by about US$ 1.5 billion in 2017, with unequal results across companies.

By Ray Poynter

Global market research is homogenising around online research, but online costs are dropping to levels that may require new models of doing business. This is one of the findings from this year’s ESOMAR Global Prices Study.

The Prices Study – an invaluable resource

Every two years, for the last 25 years, ESOMAR conducts a Global Prices Study, to benchmark the cost of research around the world. This year’s report is based on 636 responses, from 116 countries, representing over one-third of global market research, in terms of value. In this article we highlight some of the key findings from the report.

The falling cost of research

From 2014 to 2016 the cost of research declined in most countries for most modes (i.e. online, CATI, and face-to-face). In 2018, some of those declines have been halted and even reversed – but only for CATI and face-to-face. The price of online research continues to decline in most markets.

In 2010, the global median price of a simple online U&A study (e.g. simple study with no presentation), was (US)$14,000. In 2018 the global median price is just (US)$8,000. This change reflects raw prices, it does not take inflation and currency changes into account.

The Global Prices Study publishes a key markets’ figure, based on USA, UK, Germany, France and Japan (five developed markets that account for about three-quarters of all the research spend globally). In 2010, the key markets median price for this simple online U&A project was $27,000, in 2018 the median price for these five markets is just $9,000. This enormous change has some key implications, including:

• The price difference between the key markets and the rest of the world for online, simple projects is disappearing. This might make life harder for markets where low wages might have created advantages in the past.
• In high-wage economies, for example the key markets, these low prices are only viable with high levels of automation and standardisation. If prices fall much further it will imply almost no human input – and a very different business model.

If you’re an ESOMAR member you can read the full article in MyESOMAR in the digital copy of Research World. You can also download the full report here. If you’re not a member of ESOMAR you can join and receive a free copy of Research World 6 times a year or alternatively you can sign up for a subscription of the magazine in our publications store.