Private market reports publishers sales forces have a lot of choice in their e-business strategy: Banners, press articles, interview... they are using classical marketing tools to generate traffic and sales over the Internet.

But for few years, they also sign distribution agreements with a new kinds of distributors : market research aggregators. What’s a market research aggregator ? What are the characteristics of that market ? What’s its history ? today’s situation ? future ? Who are the leaders ?

We are in this business for 6 years. And have seen so many new incomers ! We propose you to discover this market today through different papers and interviews we will post in the coming weeks.

What's a market research aggregator ?

The aggregator is an intermediary between off the shelves market research publishers, such as Datamonitor, and clients. They are the most famous indirect e-channel sales for market research publishers..

Their business model is based on commission given by publishers on each sales. No fix fees, only success ! To multiply the occasion of sales, they gather as many reports as possible, on different industry, players, countries… For an aggregator : Catalog = Content, Content = Traffic, Traffic = Commission

We estimate that 200 000 multi-clients reports are available online. But few publishers providing deep catalog on the market : Datamonitor, Euromonitor or IDC are the most famous. All of these use the aggregator channel to distribute their industry reports.

Thus, leading aggregators share almost the same catalog. And nowadays, their only tangible difference is the language in which the user interface is translated. Aggregator now exist in English, French, Spanish, German, Korean….

Market Characteristics

The entry barriers on the market are really low, which explain the multiplication (proliferation ??) of new comers. Anyone can open a website, sign few agreement and begin to sell worldwide. Skills required are distance selling knowledge, and a dash of good sense

Publishers offer’s is really atomised. If a very large number of publishers sell industry reports, few of them are global, large and famous ! This last have developed specific part of their organization towards aggregator (ex : licensees manager), and specific offers too. Publishers conditions to enter an aggregator catalog are quite basic : warranty about marketing operation (ex : Call Center), and safe financial situation

The clients are potentially any organisation looking for information on market, competitors, products …. The benefits of using aggregator is double : - simplify their search - simplify ordering process, especially in case of multiple reports acquisition

If we had to make a typology, we could share clients between - Industry focused professional o They regularly look for information on a single industry, their company core market. Usually, they are working as marketing or sales manager - Multi-industries players o They look for information on a number of industry, their company is selling services to different markets. Obvious examples are consulting firm, banks, VC…. - Administration and Governmental organisation

We will publish next week the second chapter of this paper, and will then present the competitive landscape and the most important event that occurs for 10 years