Marketing Research Budget Cycles – A Growing Headache for Us All
One of my favorite sayings, corny though it may be, is “Don’t let the tail wag the dog.” But more on that in a moment.
Having just attended this year’s spring meetings of PBIRG and PMRG, I was left with several impressions. First, I continue to be impressed by the number of people these meetings draw. Attendance at each ranged from 300 to 400 people, significant increases over a few years ago but continuing a turn-out rate we have seen in recent years. Both sessions were carefully orchestrated, anchored by excellent keynote speakers and filled with other presentations.
That having been said, a couple of other observations are in order. First, as usual, client attendance at both sessions hovered around 20 percent or below. No great news value here, since client attendance has been dropping for years from the old 50/50 days. Gratefully, the content of both programs has been adjusted to reflect the new audience mix, with significant emphasis being placed on topics of interest to agency personnel.
Additionally, the number of “suppliers” with booths at the “vendor fairs” continues to escalate. Many small, previously unheard of companies pop up at each conference, which amazes me considering the continued decline in the number of clients and their budgets and the significant increase in the importance of carefully negotiated preferred vendor agreements.
Which brings me to the specific perspective I want to comment on in this issue of Vanderveer’s Views, i.e., the increasing difficulty, or maybe growing impossibility, of maintaining a viable business model in the health care marketing research agency space.
A glance in the rearview mirror at 2009 shows that most significantly sized agencies in our marketplace were caught with too much staff in the face of dwindling budgets...
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