Market research firms: the main types, what they cost and how to brief one

A market research firm designs and runs a study for you: it works out the method, recruits the people, collects the answers and tells you what they mean. Choosing one well comes down to three steps. Decide how much of the work you want to hand over, write a short brief that states the decision the research is for, then compare proposals on method, team and quality checks rather than price alone.

Before you do any of that, check whether you need a firm at all. If your question is how a particular group of buyers makes a decision, a handful of conversations you run yourself can often answer it faster and for far less.

The main types of market research firms

Firms differ mostly in how much of the project they take on. Drive Research, a US full-service firm, groups the options into three levels: a full-service partner that handles design, fieldwork, analysis and reporting; a specialist that runs one phase, such as recruiting participants or sourcing survey respondents; and self-serve tools you run yourself. Two other kinds of supplier often come up in the same search.

For the last two, see what market research reports and expert calls cost and how the main expert network companies compare.

What a firm will cost and how long it takes

Many firms do not publish prices. Drive Research publishes its own averages: $10,000 to $15,000 or less for limited projects that are not full-service, $15,000 to $30,000 for full-service consumer research, $30,000 to $50,000 for full-service B2B research, and $50,000 or more for international, advanced-analytics or multi-part studies. It gives typical timelines of two to three days for data collection alone, six to eight weeks for a full-service study, and eight to twelve weeks for advanced or international work. Those are one firm's figures for its own work, not an industry survey.

At the self-serve end, Pollfish lists survey responses from $0.95 each and says its simple general-population full-service studies start at $5,000 per market.

Write the brief before you contact anyone

The UK's Market Research Society (MRS) publishes a buyer's guide that says projects often disappoint because too little time went into defining the problem. Its example is research into what is wrong with a product when sales are falling, while the real cause is a demotivated sales team. MRS recommends a written brief, answered by a written proposal, rather than a purely verbal exchange.

A brief covers what you expect to do with the results, the questions you want answered, your timing and your budget range. A hypothetical example from a company that sells scheduling software to independent veterinary clinics:

• Decision: whether to build a pharmacy-ordering add-on next year.
• What we need to learn: how clinics order medicines today, who decides on new ordering tools, and what they pay for the current process.
• Who: practice managers and owners at clinics with one to three locations, including clinics that are not our customers.
• Timing and budget: results in eight weeks; a stated budget range.
• Already known: our support tickets mention ordering problems, but only from current customers.

Drive Research also suggests sharing your budget, so firms can size the method to it instead of guessing.

How to compare proposals

The proposal should help refine your problem, set out the research design, name the team and list the deliverables and costs, according to MRS. When you compare firms, ask:

• Have you run this kind of study, with this kind of participant, before?
• Can you run the specific method this question needs, such as in-depth interviews, a segmentation or a pricing study?
• How do you recruit participants, and how do you check for fraudulent or careless survey responses? Drive Research notes that firms differ in how thoroughly they clean data.
• Who will do the work each day, and who writes the findings?
• What exactly will we receive: raw data, a report, a presentation?

MRS advises against choosing on lowest price alone, and suggests UK buyers start from agencies that follow its Code of Conduct. Whatever the country, ask what quality standards a firm follows for sampling and recruitment.

When your own interviews are enough

MRS warns that interpreting research is harder than it looks. A firm is the better choice when you need a representative number, a formal method, fieldwork in several countries, or an independent result you will show to a board or investors.

Your own interviews are often enough when the question is qualitative, the decision is yours to make, and the people you need to hear from are reachable. In the veterinary example, eight conversations with practice managers could show whether ordering is a real problem before anyone pays for a study to size it. Primary market research explains how to plan those conversations, and how many customer interviews you need covers sample size.

Talk to a few people before you brief a firm

Even if you end up hiring a firm, two or three conversations with people in the market make the brief sharper. You find out which questions matter and which terms they use. Instant Expert finds people who match a description you write, such as "practice managers at independent veterinary clinics who order medicines." You review the people it finds, it sends your invitations and you pay only for calls that get booked. The directory page for product professionals in veterinary services shows the kind of people you can reach.