MR in Spain

According to ESOMAR's latest global market research study, turnover of the marketing research industry in Spain totalled US$275 million in 2001.

Spain has the eighth largest market for market research in the world according to this study. It is topped only by the USA, Japan and Canada, outside of Europe, and by Germany, the UK, France and Italy within Europe.

Surveys conducted by AEDEMO (the Spanish association of market research professionals), show that whilst growth slowed to 3% during the last year, the sector grew by an average of 7.8% per year (6% if adjusted for inflation) over the past five years which is well above the economic growth rate.

Nevertheless, Spain clearly lags behind many other countries such as the USA, the UK, Australia and the Netherlands if the level of research expenditure is compared with advertising expenditure or GDP per capita, the indicators that are often used to benchmark the marketing research relative turnover.

One reason for this lies in the fact that until recently no significant multinational company or even regional headquarter of a multinational company was located in Spain. This is now changing as companies like Telefonica, Endesa and Repsol-YPF which were previously quasi-monopolies operating in the utilities and telecoms domestic market, began to invest abroad. This also applies to banks such as SCH or BBVA. Their operations are mainly in Latin America and have given birth to the first truly Spanish multinationals.

Who is buying the research? 43% of research is commissioned by manufacturing companies. Other key sectors which commission and use research in Spain are media and advertising (12%), utilities, post and telecom 12% and the public sector.

The vast majority (80%) of research in the Spain is commissioned by domestic clients and a much smaller proportion (20%) by clients outside the country. Over three quarters (80%) is consumer research and less than a third (28%) for non-consumer research.

Other significant trends relate to changes in the type of studies conducted and data collection techniques. Continuous studies now represent around 45% of the whole research turnover, a proportion which is in line with the worldwide share identified by ESOMAR's industry survey.

A major change in the past years has been a shift away from face-to-face interviewing (now accounting for 38% of all interviews) to telephone interviewing (41% of all interviews). It is noteworthy that just 5 years ago, face-to-face represented 63% of the total, while telephone accounted for a mere 26%. Postal interviewing is stable, at the level of 6%.

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