The 2014 GRIT Report produced by Greenbook identified five key criteria for selecting a market research firm. These factors were recapped by the President of Research & Marketing Strategies (RMS), Mark Dengler, in our off-site company retreat last week. The Winter 2014 Grit Report is can be accessed here and is a comprehensive survey of the market research industry completed each year.

Here are the 5 key criteria for selecting a market research firm according to the 2014 GRIT Report with my takeaway on each factor:

• Timely Delivery and Financial Stability – turnaround time is critical and is often a barrier which prevents market research from happening because sometimes it can take too long. All organizations want to work with a market research supplier that can deliver insights in a relatively short amount of time and won’t close up shop half way through fieldwork because it can’t pay the electric bill (kind of obvious).

• Knowledge and Responsiveness – clients want to work with a research team that knows its business and can take the data and findings and apply it to recommendations to improve business. Responsiveness is also key and ties in nicely with timely delivery. Speed is essential.

• Quality Data Collection Techniques – not only does data need to be collected fast but it needs to be high quality. Quality control measures and management of telephone fieldwork is critical but it’s even more critical with online and panel studies when surveys are self-administered by respondents. Here are 5 data integrity checks for online surveys to handle your “daydreamers”, “impostors”, and “speeders”.

• Price and Access to Market – price is always on everyone’s list but can it be a competitive advantage? Interestingly, organizations with research budgets under $100,000 were more likely to rate price as being a more important factor than those with budgets over $100,000. Access to market is key when selecting a focus group facility to recruit participants in a nearby market. It is also important when choosing a panel  vendor which may have access to key targeted audiences (physicians, high-level decision-makers, etc.) that other firms do not.

• Experience and Consultative Skills – organizations hiring a market research firm want to know that the team they are working with has done this before. No organization wants its project to be the guinea pig for a methodology or for the first project for a new analyst. Consultative skills tie in with the research firm’s ability to listen to the client’s needs and then deliver on them.

Research & Marketing Strategies (RMS) is a market research firm in Syracuse NY. If you are interested in conducting a market research study with our team contact our Director of Business Development Sandy Baker at SandyB@RMSresults.com or by calling 1-866-567-5422.