Honomichl Reports Decline in US MR Revenues

America's top 50 research firms saw domestic revenues fall 3.5% to $8.61bn in 2009, according to the latest annual report compiled by Jack Honomichl. This compares with a 1.6% increase to $8.98bn in 2008.

2009 non-US research revenue at $9.47bn represented 52.4% of the total generated, and was also down on the figure two years earlier ($9.81bn).

Income at the Top 50 US research companies was $7.84bn in 2009, in contrast to just over £8bn in 2008 and $7.8bn in 2007. Thirty of the Top 50 saw a decline in revenue in 2009, compared with 17 in 2008.

Revenue at Bellomy Research plummeted 25.7% to $12.4m, while at Harris Interactive - pending the effect of a series of recovery initiatives - revenue dropped 24.0% to $100.1m. Employee-owned Burke Inc. also saw a 23.4% decline in takings to $38.9m.

In contrast, high revenue growth was seen at online customer community developer Communispace (up 18.0% to $34.7m), and multi-screen measurement specialist Rentrak (up 22% to $14.4m), which yesterday reported a 91% drop in fourth-quarter profit.

Retail research and brand specialist dunnhumbyUSA experienced spectacular growth of 33% to $87.4m.

US revenue for the top 10 US agencies was as follows:

US Rank	Organization	US Research Revenues($ millions)	% change from 2008
1	Nielsen	2,298.0	3.0
2	Kantar	850.9	-10.4
3	IMS Health	801.1	-5.9
4	Westat	502.4	7.0
5	SymphonyIRI Group	441.7	-0.7
6	Arbitron	379.1	4.0
7	Ipsos	288.8	-7.3
8	GfK USA	288.5	-11.7
9	Synovate	214.5	-12.4
10	J.D. Power and Associates	164.4	-13.7

Rate of growth from year to year has been adjusted so as not to include revenue gains or losses from acquisitions or divestitures

The Honomichl Top 50 is published by the American Marketing Association magazine, Marketing News.