Transforming the marketing research industry

Stephan Thun and D. Randall Brandt

This paper builds a case for three 'imperatives' for transforming the current marketing research industry and organizations that compete within it: a need to shift from designing research for projectability to designing research for comparability to and integration with other data sources; a need to supplement research competencies and offerings with data integration and linkage competencies and offerings; and a need to supplement data collection and analysis services with data deployment and utilization services.

Transforming the marketing research industry

Stephan Thun and D. Randall BrandtMaritz Research, United States

INTRODUCTION

In what has come to be regarded as a classic essay, Theodore Levitt describes organization after organization that has fallen victim to “marketing myopia.” For example, after summarizing the rise and fall of the American railroads, from institutions once thought to be impervious to the threat of obsolescence, to organizations “flat on their backs, broke, and pleading for government subsidies,” Levitt explains:

“The railroads did not stop growing because the need for passenger and freight transportation declined. That grew. The railroads...

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