Insights into the Market Research Industry- Analysis into the Key Job Skills and Qualifications Required
Market research is the process of gathering information and data on customers and markets followed by an in depth analysis to generate actionable intelligence. Companies use market research to to understand customer requirements and satisfaction, identify potential markets for their products and quantify risks and opportunities. Companies can have internal teams dedicated to conducting market research or they can subcontract to external firms focused on their business areas. Either way a strong knowledge of their customers and markets is essential for companies to stay competitive which makes market research and analytics a fairly critical job function. In this study we have endeavored to develop a quantitative treatment that would help the reader understand some of the key skills and qualifications required to break into this field.
Barplot of Educational Qualifications as Analyzed from Profiles of Market Research Professionals
From our analysis of professionals in the field of market research found out that the average tenure of a professional is 10.7 years (excluding internships). Experience (and hence domain knowledge) can be a very important factor for companies looking to hire market research professionals. Education wise we found that highly advanced degrees like doctorates were not extremely common. 65.7% of the analyzed professionals had at least a bachelor’s degree, 54.3% and 4.8% had a master’s or PhD respectively.
Most Common Majors by Bachelor’s Degrees as Analyzed from Profiles of Market Research Professionals
Major’s at Master’s Level for Market Research Professionals as Analyzed from their Profiles
The word cloud shows the most common majors by bachelor’s degrees as analyzed from the profiles of market research professionals. According to the figure engineering, psychology, economics, business and marketing are some of the most commonly pursued bachelor’s degrees by market researchers. More specifically 20.3% of the professionals had a business or degree, 20.3% had a degree in marketing, followed by economics and management which were at 15.2% and engineering at 13.5%. At the master’s level 29.1% of the professionals had a marketing degree followed by 14.5% of people who had degrees in either business or engineering.
An analysis of the job data revealed a lot of senior level / executive positions available. We classified any positions with the keywords like ‘manager’, ‘senior’ or ‘lead’ in this category. 25.4% of the available positions fell into this class. Junior level positions were 21.8% of the total available roles and 4.0% positions were in leadership like those of directors etc.
Soft Skills in Market Research - Bars Represent Data from Job Descriptions and the Dotted Red Line from Professional Profiles
Percentage of Position Types as Analyzed from Job Descriptions
A better understand some of the key skills required in market research we grouped them based on their attributes. One of the most important groups we explored was soft skills. As market research is a fairly quantitative field we hypothesized that expertise with certain analytical and presentation tools would be an important requirement. Our analysis of job descriptions revealed that Ms Excel was the most ubiquitously required soft skill in 38.6% of the jobs analyzed. other analytical tools like SPSS and R studio were also found to be very important with mentions in 13.8% and 12.3% of job descriptions. Microsoft Powerpoint was also found to be a critical soft skill (23.2%), which is very understandable as it is one of the more common ways for market analysts and researchers to present their findings. Similarly, when we analyzed the profile of professionals in the field we found that 17.9% of the professionals listed Ms Excel as a skill. Powerpoint was listed by 13.8% and SPSS and R Studio was listed by 10.3% and 6.2% of the people respectively. Interestingly, even though the absolute percentages are different the top 4 soft skills we found in job descriptions were in the same order as professional’s profiles we analyzed. The figure underlines the keys software packages we found were the most commonly used in the market research industry. The red dotted line represents the percentages based of the profiles of professionals in the industry. It is very likely that some of the larger differences arise from professionals not listing certain skills in their professional profiles. For example, with Ms Excel we only found that 17.9% of professionals had listed it as a skill in their profiles. However, 38.6% of the job descriptions listed. It is very likely the difference is not a gap between the required and available skills, it is merely a result of professionals not listing it in their profiles. However, even if that is the case, a very important learning here is the fact that employers deem this skill to be important enough to be listed in their job descriptions. Neglecting to mention such a skill in their profile may cost a job seeker a potential interview opportunity. We have also observed professionals versed in programming languages like Python and R seldom do not include it in their professional profiles. The gap within these specific skills is more likely to be more realistic than compared to skills like Excel and Powerpoint. This could be potentially useful skills to garner for job aspirants looking for opportunities in market research.
Subject matter expertise is a fairly important part of the market research job description. Having a strong understanding of the inner workings of a particular industry can be a huge asset while trying to break into a market research role into that particular sector. Plus experience in a given industry can also translate into valuable contacts who can be a very important asset during data collection. Hence, we broke down the job opportunities based on the specific sectors they were recruiting for. This gave us a useful insight into critical sectors from a market research perspective. From our analysis we found that most of the market research opportunities were in the healthcare sector (20.8%). The advertising industry came in second with 15.7% of the opportunities. Other important sectors include retail, financial services and manufacturing.
Top Industry Verticals in Market Research as Analyzed from Job Descriptions
Some of the key skills listed by market research professionals have been shown in the figure below Leaving the obvious ones like market research we found that skills like competitive analysis and strategy were listed by 29.7% of the professionals. Data analysis is undoubtedly a very important skill for a market research professional and was also listed by a significant number (28,.3%) of professionals. Management skills like planning and project management were also found to be very crucial. A sizable number of professionals also listed business development and team leadership as a skill. The data from professionals as expected reveals significant focus on business and management skills plus a very quantitative focus. Based on this analysis Candidates looking to break into this field can benefit from getting certain certifications in areas like project management or customer segmentation.
Key Skills for Market Research Professionals based on Profiles
This concludes our report on the market research industry. We will be adding more analysis and update our article as we gather more data. In the meantime please let us know if you found the article useful. Also, if there are other aspects of this industry which we did not cover please reach out and help us make our report better.