Custom Survey Research

The primary market research industry is huge, with over $23 billion in revenues. The portion of the industry focused on financial markets is a tiny sliver, representing only $208 million in revenues, according to Integrity Research’s estimate. Nevertheless, finding survey firms that understand the requirements of financial analysts can be daunting.

Our Approach

In this ResearchFocusSM report we highlight survey firms that have experience in working with financial analysts at sell-side or buy-side institutions. We also provide insights on how financial analysts use survey firms, background on the industry and regulatory/compliance issues. We profile around 50 survey firms and offer as bonus material a best practices guide to conducting successful surveys.

In producing this report, Integrity Research collaborated with ValueNotes, which has special expertise in analyzing outsourcing firms, including offshore survey firms. Both firms contributed to the writing and editing of the report.

A key component of the report is a survey of financial analysts we conducted between April and June 2009. Eighty-six professionals were respondents, including heads of research, chief investment officers, portfolio managers and analysts at buy- and sell-side financial institutions in the US, Europe, and Asia. Our survey was conducted both online and via the telephone. In addition to the survey, we held indepth interviews with experts in the survey research field. The report also draws upon the authors' experience tracking the investment research space; and mainstream literature on the topic of primary market research and survey work.

It must be noted that some of the analysis presented in this report is based on a relatively small sample of quantitative and qualitative interviews of buy-side and sell-side analysts and portfolio managers. Consequently, these results cannot be considered to be representative of the universe of sell-side and buy-side analysts who use formal and informal surveys. Our intention in this report is to provide a qualitative analysis of the data. However, it also must be mentioned that the data gathered in our survey is consistent with our own observations of the independent research industry over the past six years.