Graphic displaying the Research Technology ecosystem

ResTech Landscape | Updated March 2021

 

The New ResTech Landscape

The second version of the ResTech landscape is finally complete. When we launched the first iteration of the scape, we couldn’t have imagined the attention it would receive and the collaboration it would generate. I believe the ResTech scape is helping all of us to find our place in this broad, continuously-expanding industry. 

Through all of this, we learned quite a bit about the industry and how companies work together within it. In our ideating, we’ve found two things to be true. First, we learned that the ResTech scape will never be perfect; it will always be a work in progress. So, if you find yourself reconsidering the way we’ve categorized your company or others in the space, please continue to share your feedback

Second, we decided to create some rules around placing companies in categories: there is one bucket per company unless a company is truly a top-three player in another. We also solidified the definitions we use to define the four major areas of the landscape and the various categories within it. For those of you who are curious about how we defined each ResTech category, the definitions can be found at the bottom of this post. 

 

 

Thank You All

Lastly, I also have to thank everyone who shared feedback on the ResTech landscape. Without the immeasurable time and expertise contributed toward this project, the finished product wouldn’t be anywhere near as comprehensive as it is today. Special thanks to all of the companies listed below.

AdidasGlobal SurveysOculid
AdvanisGlobaLexiconOnePulse
Aha!GMO ResearchOpinion Capital
AlidaGoogleParadigm Sample
AmazonGrassy PathwaysPermira
ANOVAX ResearchGray Matter ThinkingPhebi.AI
ApothemGroupSolverPilotly
AppinioGuaipecaPollfish
Applied Marketing ScienceGuidepost Growth EquityPotentiate
Arborwood PartnersHarmonizeAiPotloc
AskiaHearsay PlatformPowr of You
AstroHelixaProdege
AttestHighlightProtobrand
b3intelligenceIDG EnterprisesQ One Tech
BAV GroupiMAD ResearchQ2 Insights
Big Sofa TechnologiesinBrainQuantilope
BitBurst GmbHInfotoolsQuestionPro
Borderless AccessIngressQutee
BraingineersInMomentRealeyes
BrightstarInsaas GmbHRemesh
CatalystMRInsights AssociationResearch Management technologies
CatalyxInsights NetworkResearch on Mobile – ROM
Cauliflower GmbHInsights PlatformResearch Strategy Group
Cerenti Marketing GroupIntellex Dynamic Reportingresponse:AI
Chadwick Martin BaileyintelliSurveyRevelry Labs
Civis AnalyticsInternet Research BureauRival Technologies
ClyxIpsosRIWI
College PulseIpsos MoriRobas Research
ComscoreIRIRubinson Partners, inc.
Conjoint.lyJTN ResearchRybbon
CULTURE ENGINEERSKantarSaaSconversion.io
Currant FieldingKantar MarketplaceSampleCon
DataDiggersKantar MediaSawtooth
David Shanker ConsultingKantar ProfilesScanmarQED
DialsmithKPMGSchlesinger Group
Directions ResearchLatanaSKIM
DISQOLewers ResearchSPLENDID RESEARCH
DumbstruckLivePanelSTRAT7
DynataMadaiSurveyMonkey
e-mazingMAi ReseearchSweet Insight Group
EasyMovieMarket CubeTap Research
eCGlobalMaru BlueTchibo GmbH
ECI ResearchMcClatchyThe Experience Agency
Embee MobileMDITheorem Reach
EscalentMDRGToluna
EurekaMeasure ProtocolTotal play
Excelerate DigitalMedalliaTremendous
EyeSeeMercury AnalyticsTripleScoop
Feedback LoopMichelinTrusted Talent LLC
Fieldwork Inc.MindProberW5 Insight
FocusVisionMIS GroupWiseworks
Fuel Cyclemo’web reseachWizer
FurtherNebuZappi
GapFish GmbHNewMRZiff Davis
Gazelle Global Research ServicesNielsenZinklar
GfKNielsenIQ
NW Compass Point Consulting

 

ResTech Category Definitions

Research – Typically Marketing Research Agencies (MRAs) have large teams of researchers and professionals who can design survey instruments that answer their customers key questions.  MRAs have large centralized teams that manage the entire data collection process from end to end.  

Consulting Firms – Typically Consulting Firms have large teams of consultants and professionals who can uncover their customer key challenge and implement change.  Consulting firms have many decentralized teams that hire third party agencies, market makers, or audience companies to manage the entire data collection process.  

Full Stack Survey Platform – A survey platform that is typically used as a general purpose survey tool that can fill a significant number of research methodologies and use cases.  FSSP companies also provide a deep data analysis and visualization capability. Usually, these platforms offer the user maximum flexibility in terms of survey design and data analysis.

Agile Research – A survey platform that is typically used as a specific purpose tool or fully automated tool with a limited number of research methodologies and use cases.  Agile research platforms provide analysis and visualization based on the subset of methodologies that they support.  These  platforms tend to offer the user speed, agility, and automation instead of breadth of flexibility of survey design and data analysis.  

CX Specific -A technology platform that allows businesses to measure, manage and improve their customer experience, by collecting information about each customer’s interactions with the company, analyzing it and interpreting outcomes and responses.

Employee Experience – A technology platform that allows businesses to measure, manage and improve their employee experience, by collecting information about each employee’s interactions with the company, analyzing it and interpreting outcomes and responses.

Media Measurement – A platform that allows businesses to measure the reach and effectiveness of their media across all the devices their consumers use. 

Marketplaces – A platform where buyers and sellers of research respondents meet to efficiently transact.  Marketplaces don’t typically own their own panel assets or develop research but rather focus on matching buyers and sellers in a stable, quality controlled environment.  

Mobile Ethnography – A platform that allows the observation of consumers in a natural environment (not a survey), allowing you to gain a reliable understanding of their behavior, values, and beliefs.

User Experience – A platform aimed at understanding the digital user experience, finding insights and identifying issues so that developers and product managers can improve their products.

AB Testing & Optimization – A platform or tool that allows researchers to test making a change to an experience or design against a control. Researchers can target the effect of different changes on different groups and deliver insights which help optimize outcomes.

Social Polling – A platform which combines social media and opinion polling to deliver natively sourced feedback.

Syndicated Insights – A platform which focuses solely on specific types of data to provide a broad long-term view of a product or service environment. Rather than custom market research, syndicated insights can provide turnkey data for researchers to start with.

Brand Tracking – A platform or tool that can provide longitudinal data to examine the attitudes toward and awareness of a brand over a set period of time.

Communities – A Company with an at-the-ready pool of respondents who’ve opted in for ongoing research engagement. These respondents can provide a high degree of speed and efficiency and are a core tool for agile research.

Eye Tracking – A technology that can use various types of hardware for user experience testing to measure a users attention by tracking where their eyes are looking. 

Qualitative – A platforms that researches a respondent’s motivations, thoughts, and attitudes towards a product or ad. Qualitative research brings depth to data collection analysis by providing context and insight to confirm a hypothesis. 

Text Analytics – A platform that translates unstructured text into quantitative data to uncover insights trends, and patterns. This technique enables companies to understand the sentiment of customers by studying patterns in text.

Social Media Listening and Analytics – A platform that monitors online conversations taking place via social media and can be used for brand tracking, competitor analysis, crisis management, trend monitoring, audience profiling, and more.

Dashboards, Visualization, and Infographics – A platform that enables a researcher to take data and visualize it in various ways with the goal of finding patterns and insights and being able to translate data into a visually coherent form. 

Survey Analysis – A platform or tool that helps researchers analyze the results of their surveys via data tables, dashboards, visualizations, advanced analytics, and more.

Visual Analytics – A platform that allows researchers to analyze visual assets and identify attributes and design influences that are translated into insights.

Statistics & Data Science – A platform that allows researchers to run complicated quantitative analysis on a range of sources. They can include advanced statistical methods and may also include visualizations and dashboards as well.

SEO & Keyword Search – A technology that gives insight into how frequently and when certain words are searched in order to drive strategy around how a product optimizes itself for online search.

Global Audiences –  Broadly, the term “audience” refers to the modern definition of panel or sample – meaning how users or respondents are recruited into ResTech platforms.  Global Audience companies have large volumes of capacity in all four major research regions:  NA, EMEA, APAC, and LATAM. 

Regional Audiences – Regional Audience companies either focus on one or two regions at the most.

Market Makers – These are typically data collection and sample fielding specialists that provide buyers with the tools and services needed to succeed in their research objectives.  These tools and services include matching buyers with sellers, programming and hosting, translation, data cleaning, data reporting, and more. Market Makers play an integral role in the overall ecosystem with a strong correlation to their role in financial services.

DMP / Identity – A platform that unifies, collects, organizes, and activates first, second, and third- party audience data supporting data-driven marketing and customer insights.

Expert Networks – A company that specializes in connecting researchers with subject matter experts who can deliver high quality insights on a variety of topics.

Quality – A platform that helps researchers get a better sense of the quality and suitability of a respondent for a survey in order to raise the integrity of a research project. 

Loyalty – A platform which helps companies reward or incentivize user behavior often by managing the process of sending gifts or prizes to customers and respondents.

Behavioral Analytics – A platform that focuses on collecting and analyzing patterns of online human behavior, providing insight into the actions of users in order to optimize for specific business outcomes.

CRM – Customer relationship management platforms help organizations manage and administer their interactions with customers, often yielding a large volume of first party data which organizations can use to better understand their customers.