Initial Findings of Marco Polo

At the recent ESOMAR annual congress, the initial findings of the three-stage Marco Polo research project were presented. The research focuses on cooperation between customers and market research providers. It was found in essence that market research clients often live on an island isolated from both end users in their own organisation and research providers.

According to Marc Hofmans who presented the findings, 'internally time pressures play a role as well as the lack of understanding of what the research process entails and the lack of understanding of value that research can bring. In quite some cases, clients feel that providers cannot deliver what they want: they do not have enough bright and experienced people, lack creativity and innovation and are not familiar with the company and their products.'

According to the Marco Polo project, market research providers also identified a number of roadblocks in getting along with clients. They indicate that they do not have sufficient access to the end users in the client's organisation and they are not adequately informed about business objectives and issues. Providers do not feel leveraged by clients, resulting in relationships that are too transactional and project based.

Other key findings included:

• There is a clear need to communicate and cooperate better and invest in people at client and provider level.
  
• Both clients and providers recognize that clients will require far more creativity and business intelligence from providers in the near future.
  
• Most clients state that market research will become more important because of greater incorporation and integration in company's strategic planning.
  
• In the near future, more partnerships will emerge. If not, a stronger division between 'data providers' and 'market research consultancies' is likely to occur, according to many researchers.

Marco Polo is the name of a three-stage research project, initiated by ESOMAR, supported by ARF. During the first qualitative phase of Marco Polo 90 interviews were held in main international MR markets, whilst 1375 interviews were carried out in the quantitative phase worldwide. During the next third stage, the focus will be on developing a number of scenarios and carrying out workshops to generate action plans to further optimise client- provider cooperation. Full results will be presented during RELEAS3, Geneva, in January 2003.

All articles 2006-22 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.

Register (free) for Daily Research News

Simple printable version of this article

Email this article to a friend