The Quirk’s annual Q Report aims to understand client-side researchers and see what is on their minds. The Q Report looks into a range of topics including education, hiring trends and shifts in employment.
The 2023 edition of the Q Report received 707 usable qualified responses from full-time (defined as 35+ hours per week) client-side insights professionals from May 24 to July 10. We highlight interesting pieces and share respondent comments throughout but mostly let the data speak for itself. A breakdown of compensation including mean base salary, bonus, dividends and other forms of compensation can be found at www.quirks.com/tools/salary-survey. Twenty-four end-client marketing research titles are included in the results. Titles with over 10 respondents also contain crosstabs by age, gender, industry, location and more.
Demographics
This year, the majority of respondents (29%) indicated having 16-25 years of experience in the marketing research industry. Twenty-six percent of industry professionals have over 25 years of experience, 18% have 11-15 years and 27% have been in the industry for 10 or fewer years.
Changes in employment
The likelihood of hiring additional permanent marketing research employees has dropped nearly 10% compared to last year. In 2022, 49% of respondents indicated that their companies were somewhat likely, likely or very likely to take on more permanent staff, compared to 40% this year. The majority of respondents (29%) indicated that their companies are very unlikely to hire additional contract research employees in the next 12 months.
Job satisfaction
A combined 76% of respondents say they are somewhat satisfied, satisfied and very satisfied with their current employment. When asked about the changes they expect their companies to make over the next year, many mentioned an increase in conducting research and incorporating AI:
Currently providing more expansive services than market research; goal is to focus more on research in the next year.
Hopefully using AI to work with unstructured data to improve CX insights.
Conducting more research fully in-house.
Integrating the usage of generative AI in making our workflow more efficient and delivering timely results. Also moving away from project-basis work to real-time dashboards.
We mostly do brand research, so the biggest change in our company is implementing more market research.
Others mentioned budget changes:
Our budget stayed flat (which is good) but we would benefit from hiring more staff. Given the current market conditions that isn’t likely.
2024 will be a year of cutting costs, finding efficiencies, establishing best practices.
Providing more budgeting to complete proactive research.
While changes in marketing research are expected, some simply want it to be recognized:
Hopefully recognizing the value of MR and paying more attention to what the MR function brings to the table in terms of business decision-making.
Unemployment in the marketing research and insights industry
Seventy-one percent of those looking for a job are expanding their search outside of the marketing research industry. Of those unemployed in 2023, 35% are 46-55 years old and 22% are 35 or younger.
Those unemployed point to various challenges for finding employment:
There seem to be too few roles for experienced people. I am disqualified from individual contributor roles because I have management experience and competing with the hordes for too few jobs in research management. Location is also a problem – I can’t relocate – so that limits my options.
Finding a position that is the right fit – finding senior-level roles is challenging as there are a more limited number of them. Recently, a number of companies have laid off employees following the hiring boom of 2021 and 2022. The job market has cooled a bit.
Market research positions want advanced math and statistics degrees and/or experience with advanced stats software that is typically only available in those workplaces. While I have years of experience, my original degree was not in this field. I have found this common in many people of color in this field as well.
Employers need experienced candidates [making it] difficult for fresh graduates [to] get employed! Secondly, the system of getting employed needs candidates with supportive people behind them (connection). Lastly, high competition for the position whereas one position is contested by more than 200+ applicants. 
