Global favorites dominate research

It's fair to say the market research sector in Hong Kong is highly active, sometimes to the point of aggressive, but from the Agency of the Year survey there are some clear standouts in the local market.

Global research giant ACNielsen took a commanding lead in the market research field, with 25% of client respondents selecting ACNielsen as their preferred research agency. This is hardly surprising. Nielsen had a stellar 2007, making huge inroads into the new media landscape and focusing hard on its rapidly growing Greater China business.

Synovate, another global mega-research group, which operates in some 51 countries, was a clear runner up with close to 19% share of client recommendations. Also making the top 10 list was Taylor Nelson Sofres, more commonly know as TNS, Cimigo, Millward Brown and Research International.

Delving further into the results, the survey shows that client marketers are not as well versed about the research sector as they probably should. On a client and agency split just five research companies in the top 10 list managed to score a higher recommendation from client marketers as opposed to their research agency counterparts.

ACNielsen, Cimigo, Oracle Added Value, Research International and Ipsos were all an exception to this, with each company scoring a higher client recommendation than agency recommendation.

Synovate, TNS and Millward Brown however, received a high ranking from their agency peers, but were let down in terms of client recommendations. In the top 20 list, not one research group managed to score a higher client recommendation than from their agency peers.

On a category-by-category split ACNielsen dominated topping the list in the educational and personal services category, consumer products category and in particular the media and entertainment categories.

Cimigo, which clients rated highly across a number of categories, led the financial services and automotive sectors with 31% and 14.3% respectively. The company was also only second only to ACNielsen in educational and personal services category.