Reprinted from 'Research News', November 2003. Published by the MRSA (Market Research Society of Australia). See the MRSA site for the latest edition.

A combination of factors makes the publication of a 'league table' or top 10 by turnover difficult in Australia. One factor is the United States' Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, enacted in 2002, which governs how publicly listed companies can report their financial results - it means that Australia's WPP Group companies (Millward Brown, Research International) and ACNielsen cannot disclose their turnover. Secondly, other companies declined to participate in AMRO's most recent voluntary survey (conducted alongside the compulsory ABS survey last year), while others who participated requested that company turnover not be published.

However, there is consensus that ACNielsen would have the largest annual turnover in Australia, in excess of $80m. Research News then used a combination of sources to establish in which of three other bands companies in the Top 10 would appear. Please note that the lists within bands are in alphabetical order, not in order of magnitude.

Band 1 - Top - $80m plus
ACNielsen

Band 2 - Upper middle - $25m-$79m
Millward Brown
Roy Morgan Research
TNS, incorporating NFO Australia and NFO Donovan

Band 3 - Lower middle - $15m-$25m
Ipsos Australia (including former research division of NCS Pearson and Mackay Research, both acquired in the past two months)
The Leading Edge

Band 4 - Lower - $10m - $15m*

AMR Interactive
OzTam
Research International
Sweeney Research

Other companies hovering just below the top 10 include Colmar Brunton, DBM Consulting, Newspoll, Woolcott, Kaleidoscope, Wallis Consulting and Ekas.

* SPSS earns about $12m in software sales/licensing, although not exclusively from market research products. Retail scanning company Aztec earns about the same.