• The growth of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube has enormous implications for RMS both in terms of how the company markets itself and in the kinds of research topics and approaches clients will expect RMS to deliver.
• The social media landscape is rapidly changing with new sites and additions to sites emerging all the time, and as such, it is a field with which RMS needs to constantly keep a finger on the pulse.

7. Increased Automation of Data Reporting

• Automated reporting is a trend in many data-intensive businesses including market research. There are a large number of vendors who provide report automation as either an outsourced service or as an application that the user can run by themselves as needed.
• As RMS’s business volume increases and/or the approach evolves into a more consultative role rather than one in which report documents are seen as the main deliverable, partial or in some cases full report automation may become a necessity for generating monthly dashboards and other such documents, freeing up more time for pure analysis and strategy/recommendation development.

8. Survey Gamification

• Gamification involves applying game design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging.  The field is very much in its infancy now but is expected to grow as a new generation with shorter attention spans, a high-experience level with video games, and heavy use of online social networks becomes a larger share of consumers.

9. DIY Market Research

• A combination of limited marketing budgets and the proliferation of simplified online survey software such as Survey Monkey and Zoomerang have made do-it-yourself research a tempting option for many firms.
• The resources available to the DIY market researcher have increased as well. In October 2011, research-live.com reported Survey Monkey had added an audience panel of 350,000 U.S. members to the list of services it offers customers.

10. Spanish Language Proliferation

• Census 2010 revealed that the Hispanic population of the U.S. grew 43 percent between 2000 and 2010, over four times the growth rate of the population as a whole during that time.
• While not all American Hispanics speak Spanish as their primary language (or even at all), a significant percentage do. It is estimated that there are more than 44 million Spanish speakers in the United States.