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Research Tips

Company research can include a lot of different types of Information.  This guide focuses on the best databases the Commerce Research Library has to offer for corporate profiles and corporate family research.

If you're looking for where a company or subsidiary is officially registered check their location in one of the database below and then check the official government website for the relevant state to find official documentation.  Here is an example of the Delaware website , a popular state where many companies register.

Databases can provide incomplete and conflicting information.  Use clues like shared company names, shared executives, and shared websites to determine if two entities are connected even if they do not appear to have a parent/subsidiary relationship.

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For access, request an account . Public and private company profiles and research on both domestic and international companies. Users can search by company name, industry (keyword and NAICS or SIC codes), geographical region, employee and revenue size, and corporate family tree.

CourtLink A detailed collection of federal and state court dockets and documents, including relevant briefs, pleadings, and motions.

Nexis Diligence Diligence enables you to conduct thorough due diligence on companies and individuals, going beyond credit scores and watch lists to develop a comprehensive due diligence report utilizing global news sources, sanction lists, company information, legal history, and public records.

Nexis Dossier Take advantage of a broad collection of company financials, industry analysis, hard-to-find contact data and more—from a single interface.

Nexis Gain unique insights from over 40,000 sources, including trusted up-to-date and archived news, company profiles, public records, industry information and social media content – all in one place.

Best Bets for Corporate Family Trees

Other Company Research Resources

As part of the EBSCOhost Business Source Premier database, Company Profiles provide MarketLine/Medtrack Reports, which cover company overview, SWOT analyses, key facts, top competitors, company products and services, subsidiaries, etc.

This directory features listings across the government, corporations, and nonprofit organizations. Find individuals holding high-level positions and their support staff or locate departments, agencies, major offices, and smaller bureaus by subject areas or organization.

ProQuest's ABI/INFORM includes full-text journals and key trade publications, dissertations, market reports, industry reports, business cases, global and trade news, local and regional business information, SSRN working papers, and other industry-focused information, as well as the Wall Street Journal back to 1984.

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How to Research a Company: The Ultimate Guide

Good company research can take many forms. Depending on your research goals, you might want to look at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of a market, or drill down into key industry leaders and emerging players to unpack their successes.

If you want to beat the competition, you need to know their business as well (if not better) than your own. The more intel you have, the quicker you’ll be able to spot and leverage opportunities, respond to market changes, and grow.

Read on to discover how to research a company online, tear down its strategies, and take over its market share.

What is company research?

Company research gathers and analyzes information about a business and its customers. This means understanding its performance data and target audience so you can optimize your own strategy.

In today’s fiercely competitive markets, doing good company research is a game-changer. In fact, a 2022 report on competitive intelligence found that 98% of businesses believe researching their competitors is vital for success.

If you have the right tools to collect accurate competitive intelligence , you’ll be able to anticipate your competitors’ moves and emerging threats to stay ahead and succeed.

How to do company research in 8 steps

Researching a company is a bit like doing detective work. The deeper you go, the more questions you ask, and the more curious you are, the better the outcome will be.

Here are eight steps to steer you through the process of doing company research.

1. Track top competitors

You want to know exactly what your rivals are doing, where they’re going, and how the competitive landscape is changing. With this data, you can carefully plan your next move and take action when and where it’s needed most. Competitive tracking tools like Similarweb give you the ability to track what your rivals are up to. You can measure each competitor’s digital footprint, and identify any changes or growth over time.

Did someone experience a sudden uptick in website visits? Would you like to know why and how? Perhaps they launched a new feature or ad campaign, or maybe its social channel is driving growth.

With Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence, you get alerts about changes so you can be sure you’ll never miss a beat.

Analyzing the top performers in your industry will give you new ideas and provide targets for what is achievable for you.

Similarweb’s Analyze Industry Leaders tool will tell you who is winning in your industry based on their website performance. A Market Quadrant Analysis graph, or competitive matrix , provides a visual snapshot of the websites in your industry and how they compare based on different metrics. The industry leaders may inspire you to try new things, while the weaker competitors in your industry can provide you with swift opportunities to chip into their market share.

Pro tip: Similarweb’s Similar Sites tool helps you uncover up to 40 domains that are similar to yours. Finding these domains can be infinitely useful when conducting a competitive content analysis . You can audit these domains to learn more about their content strategy and upgrade your own.

2. Benchmark

Now that you have a good view of the market, you need to drill down into your competitors’ performance. You want to understand their metrics and KPIs so you can benchmark them against your own.

A company research and analysis tool can help you understand your competitors’ digital reach and performance. You can look at multiple websites or domains owned by a single company to analyze their aggregated data or look at a specific market. This will give you a good idea of the business’ size and market share .

You’ll also want to look at their engagement metrics and any changes over time. If you see their metrics improving, they are probably investing in a digital strategy . You should look into this to see what has been working for them. We’ll show you how in the next section.

Pro Tip: Don’t forget to look at mobile app intelligence too. There are five key metrics you’ll want to track when benchmarking an app:

• Demographics

3. Compare traffic and engagement

These days, it’s no longer enough to consider website traffic and engagement metrics on their own. The complete digital perspective of any company includes mobile app intelligence, alongside traditional desktop and mobile web metrics. You need to see the full picture before you make any judgments or decisions.

Using Similarweb digital intelligence, I wanted to view the key players in the travel industry –specifically travel booking sites, like booking.com, Expedia, and Airbnb. First, I want my company research to focus on mobile web and desktop traffic alone.

Using Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence , I can see the overall benchmarks for traffic and engagement. This shows metrics like monthly visits, unique visitors, pages per visit, bounce rate, and visit duration. 

The top websites include booking.com , Airbnb , Expedia , Agoda , and Hotels.com . So, in essence, these are my industry leaders .

However, knowing how important apps are these days to consumers, I want to consider app intelligence in my company research too. When I add this data into the mix, things look a little different.

On both Android and iOS: Expedia, Airbnb, VRBO, booking.com, and Hopper are my top five.

Now, my view of industry leaders has changed . We’ve got three key players who are leading desktop, mobile web, and app platforms; and four others, who respectively dominate different channels.

Here, you can see a range of engagement metrics that apply to mobile apps on Android. Including active users, number of sessions, and session times; which shows engagement, upturns, downturns, and opportunities at a glance.

So, when you view traffic and engagement metrics, make sure you explore desktop, mobile web, and app intelligence to get an accurate picture of what’s really going on.

4. View audience interests

Understanding cross-browsing behavior tells you what other sites your users are interested in. Maybe they are looking at other products and solutions like yours!

This audience interests tool allows you to evaluate the browsing behavior of your target audience, helping you understand user intent and their purchasing process. You might even discover new markets or a specific niche audience , and come up with new audience acquisition strategies.

5. Pinpoint audience overlap

Who else holds your potential customer’s attention? With Similarweb’s Audience Overlap feature, you can analyze metrics and insights on the overlap of visitors across up to five websites for a selected time period and geographical region. You’ll be able to determine the size of your total addressable audience , evaluate what part of the audience is shared, and pinpoint your unreached audience potential.

This is also a good way to gauge audience loyalty . You’ll see the proportion of monthly active users who look at multiple sites in the same category or just one site.

6. Analyze specific pages

While a company may be your competitor, you may not be competing on every front. You might only want to look at a particular segment of a business when doing your company research. This ensures that your insights are specific and useful, and leave out less relevant information.

Similarweb’s Segment Analysis tool lets you slice the URL of a website to analyze just the parts that are relevant to you. You can deconstruct their website to look at a specific category, topic, brand, or whatever else interests you. This can help you benchmark a specific line of business or individual products.

This analysis is extremely powerful for marketing and sales managers, data analysts, and BI specialists who want to optimize their strategies for specific business segments. For example, if you are a clothing retailer looking to launch a line of kids’ clothes, you can use this tool to analyze your competitors’ kids’ clothing lines.

7. Reveal successful conversion strategies

What makes customers convert? The only way to know for sure is to analyze conversion data across your industry. You need to understand the conversion funnel , which keywords and marketing channels drive traffic, and which trends your potential customers are interested in.

You can get a unique view of your industry’s conversion data with Similarweb’s Conversion Analysis tool. Check out each company’s conversion efficiency and how they scale over time. You can identify efficient marketing channels , go-to-market strategies, and their ROI for marketing spending. You can also benchmark your metrics across the industry average.

Understanding conversion strategies also reveals opportunities for your own growth. You can examine category performance at top retailers such as Amazon, Walmart, and Target, and identify what consumers are searching for at the different retailers and what converts. When you understand the customer journey, you can better position yourself to guide them toward purchasing from you.

8. Research mobile app performance

When you research a business, you need to look at all customer touchpoints. Today, that means analyzing apps alongside web and mobile web traffic. You want to know how well your competitors’ apps rank so you can focus on your own app strategy. With rapid consumer adoption of mobile-first spending ( 46% of people now complete a full purchase via mobile ), app intelligence is a key consideration for any type of company research. In almost every industry, the digital landscape changes when you add app intelligence metrics.

If you’re looking at apps competitively, you want to consider:

• Monthly/Daily Active Users
• No. of sessions/session time
• Sessions per user
• Overall rank
• Category rank
• User retention
• App demographics

Similarweb App Intelligence Premium now provides a few ways to help you view rankings, downloads, engagement, and usage metrics across both Android and iOS. From benchmarking an app to unpacking the successes of those with apps in your market; good company research should include app analysis. By unifying digital insights, you see a truer picture of a company’s successes online.

How to research a company like an expert

Follow these eight steps and you’ll quickly be able to research any company in any niche like a pro. Uncover key insights that tell you more about a market, target audience, or competitors to shape your own strategy for success.

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Why do company research?

Your business doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You’re competing with other companies and operating in an industry that has its own norms and expectations. If you want to succeed, you need to research other companies in your industry to ensure your strategy is aligned, but also positioned to give you a competitive advantage . You won’t be able to do this without researching other companies.

What to look for when researching a company?

You want to review all their company metrics, including traffic and engagement metrics, and look at their strategy, focus, processes, and content. You should search for any interesting ideas and identify where the company excels. All the data you collect will be valuable for you to compete.

What can company research tell you?

Good company research shows you how a market, company, and its target audience’s interests change over time. It can help you develop your own strategy for growth, and shows trends and emerging threats to watch out for.

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Founded: 1979 2019 U.S. revenue: $12.9 million Percent change from 2018: -3% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: — Percent from outside U.S.: — 2019 worldwide revenue: $12.9 million U.S. employees: 45

In a world awash in data, the challenge is to turn data into something meaningful, something that can be communicated simply and acted upon effectively. RTi Research meets that challenge head-on, turning data into meaning through smart research design, flawless execution and innovative storytelling. Everything the company does is aimed at helping its clients move their ideas and insights through their organizations to influence change. 

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Founded: 2000 2019 U.S. revenue: $18.3 million Percent change from 2018: -4.7% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: — Percent from outside U.S.: — 2019 worldwide revenue: $18.3 million U.S. employees: 61

Hypothesis uses insights, strategy and design to help important brands do amazing things. The company specializes in tough questions that take creative, multidimensional approaches, thoughtful strategy and a broad business perspective. Hypothesis’ approach combines inventive consumer-centric qualitative research, advanced analytics, strategic thinking and data visualization. Its award-winning design team translates complex information into compelling, easy-to-understand deliverables to socialize learnings and engage teams. 

In 2018, Hypothesis added important new capabilities with the launch of Momentum, a strategy that turns insight into application with downstream marketing and implementation planning. The Momentum team has worked alongside Hypothesis consultants on strategic engagements with clients focused on brand strategy, product development, and led dozens of workshops with senior and C-level executives to socialize insights and ideate on next steps. 

In 2019, Hypothesis’ focus on growth continued with its expansion to the Midwest and establishment of its Chicago office. From this office, the company will be able to service new and current clients in the Midwest and on the East Coast.

48. Bellomy Research

Founded: 1976 2019 U.S. revenue: $21 million Percent change from 2018: 1.4% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: — Percent from outside U.S.: — 2019 worldwide revenue: $21 million U.S. employees: 116

Bellomy is a privately held, family-owned, full-service market intelligence company. Bellomy focuses on driving successful business outcomes through the design and delivery of solutions that yield deeper customer understanding. The company surrounds its clients’ business challenges with an unparalleled mix of knowledge and experience, marketing science and proprietary research technology. 

Bellomy’s work involves both B2C and B2B environments—with qualitative and quantitative insight solutions spanning market segmentation, customer experience and journeys (including digital user experiences), brand equity, product innovation, shopper insights, marketing optimization, social research platforms and research technology. Bellomy works with clients across a broad range of categories and industries including consumer packaged goods, financial services, automotive, retail, restaurant and hospitality, telecommunications and technology, apparel and textiles, utilities, healthcare, insurance and home improvement.

Bellomy serves as an extension of its clients’ marketing research and customer experience departments by integrating a broad set of capabilities and areas of expertise, including segmentation, customer (and digital experience), shopper insights, social research platforms, brand equity, product innovation and marketing optimization. In addition, Bellomy clients leverage SmartIDEAS, the firm’s enterprise consumer knowledge and insight platform. 

47. Edelman Intelligence

Founded: 1999 2019 U.S. revenue: $21 million Percent change from 2018: 12.9% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $11.5 million Percent from outside U.S.: 35.4% 2019 worldwide revenue: $32.5 million U.S. employees: 131

Edelman Intelligence (EI) is the global research and analytics consultancy of Edelman, the world’s largest global communications firm. Based in New York, with employees in 18 offices internationally, EI houses more than 200 consultants, strategists, researchers, data scientists, data visualization specialists and analysts worldwide. Its specialists are method-agnostic and leverage the best of primary and secondary research, advanced analytics and business science to solve business and communications issues for its clients. EI’s offering spans the full spectrum of client needs, from mapping the current environment and targeting key audiences, to optimizing content and measuring business impact. 

EI partners with early-stage start-ups and Fortune 100 companies alike, providing strategic research, analytics, and insights-based marketing and communications counsel for a broad range of stakeholders and scopes, including government and public affairs, corporate reputation and risk strategy, crisis and issues management, employee experience and talent advisory, executive positioning, strategic communications and public relations, marketing and branding strategy, customer experience and insights, mergers, acquisitions and market entry strategy and more.

Key accomplishments in 2019 included advancement of its Edelman Trust Management (ETM) capabilities, including an evolution of its offering focused specifically on providing guidance for measuring and building trust in brands. Developed building from its 20-plus years studying trust through the Edelman Trust Barometer and the initial iteration of ETM (which explores corporate trust), this proprietary model for brand trust measurement was created in partnership with renowned academics from Harvard Business School and INSEAD, Edelman Brand experts and external marketing thought leaders. In recent months, this model has been engineered to consider fundamental transformations to consumer/brand relationship dynamics that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated.

46. KS&R

Founded: 1983 2019 U.S. revenue: $21.7 million Percent change from 2018: -1.4% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $3.6 million Percent from outside U.S.: 14.2% 2019 worldwide revenue: $25.3 million U.S. employees: 100

KS&R is a privately held strategic consultancy and full-service marketing research company. For nine consecutive years, KS&R has received the highest Gold Index composite score of any provider in the Prevision/Inside Research survey of marketing research buyers. This is a testament to the company’s passion for excellence and client-first business philosophy—wherein KS&R empowers its clients with timely, fact-based insights so they can make smarter decisions and be confident in their actions.

KS&R creates and executes global custom market research solutions for some of the best-known corporations in the world in more than 100 countries and 50 languages. It has extensive and diverse industry experience with particular strength in healthcare (pharma and device), technology, entercom, transportation, professional services, and retail and e-commerce. Team members often include business strategists with client-side experience and deep industry knowledge.

In 2019, KS&R leveraged its expansive network of pharmacy panels to build world-class capabilities for pharma inventory measurement and healthcare insights. Its marketing scientists have driven marked advances in pricing decision support, which have now been validated by positive in-market results. KS&R expanded its portfolio to include insights fusion across multiple channels of content (primary research, social media, web-based information, etc.). And finally, it introduced its KS&R Win-Loss program that provides actionable insights for how organizations can improve their value proposition and sales performance to close more deals.

Founded: 1911 2019 U.S. revenue: $22.7 million Percent change from 2018: 12.9% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: — Percent from outside U.S.: — 2019 worldwide revenue: $22.7 million U.S. employees: 78

NAXION guides strategic business decisions globally in healthcare, information technology, financial services, energy, heavy equipment and other B2B markets, drawing on depth of marketing experience in key verticals and skilled application of sophisticated and inventive methodologies. The firm’s NAscence Group helps life science innovators develop commercialization strategy through clinical trials design and selection of target indications, forecasting, brand planning and other research-based consulting services.

Engagements routinely include market segmentation, opportunity assessment and innovation, demand forecasting and pricing, positioning, brand health, market monitoring and lifecycle management. The firm deploys multiple data streams including primary research (qualitative and quantitative), secondary data, customer databases and other complex datasets to develop an integrative perspective on business problems. The firm also builds custom panels for B2B markets.

Project leaders with sector experience and research proficiency are supported by in-house methodologists and a wide portfolio of advanced analytic tools, including proprietary modeling services and software, all of them highly customized. The firm continues to invest significant resources in intellectual capital to enhance enterprise decision support with cutting-edge methods, including specialized “small data” choice models, new predictive techniques using big data and brand-customized text analytics. Its Farsight suite supports the building of highly dynamic models capable of producing forecasts for complex market scenarios, including paradigm-shift technologies, and gives market monitoring programs a forward-looking perspective that guides timely market interventions. Other services include litigation and regulatory support, often involving expert testimony in cases involving trademark confusion, deceptive advertising and brand equity. NAXION’s strong commitment to operational excellence is reflected in ISO certification and in-house operations capabilities to deliver exceptional levels of quality control. 

Founded: 1991 2019 U.S. revenue: $24.2 million Percent change from 2018: -3.6% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $1.2 million Percent from outside U.S.: 4.7% 2019 worldwide revenue: $25.4 million U.S. employees: 144

Gongos is a consultative agency that places customers at the heart of business strategy. Partnering with insights, analytics, marketing, strategy and customer experience groups, Gongos operationalizes customer centricity by helping companies both understand their customer needs and deliver on them better than anyone else.

From product innovation to portfolio management, customer experience to consumer journeys, pricing strategies to marketing optimization, and trend analysis to predictive modeling, Gongos provides both outside-in and inside-out approaches across organizations to drive greater customer attraction, retention and lifetime value.

Gongos further serves as a translator to help cross-functional teams fuel the competency to gain and apply consumer wisdom, transform decisions into action and navigate organizational change. Coalescing enterprise data with primary research and curating insights for multiple audiences further empowers stakeholders to achieve greater ROI by ensuring information is designed to influence actions and behaviors from executives to the frontline. 

Gongos’ consultative tools stem from change management principles that help organizations navigate the transformation often necessary to create a more outside-in perspective as they reorient around the customer. Gongos’ approaches to engage multiple audiences include communication strategies and tactics grounded in frameworks such as its adoption-to-advocacy model and human-centered design.

43. Maru/Matchbox **

Founded: 2016 2019 U.S. revenue: $28 million Percent change from 2018: 3.7% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $14 million Percent from outside U.S.: 33.3% 2019 worldwide revenue: $42 million U.S. employees: 150

Maru/Matchbox began disrupting the market research industry in 2000. Powered by proprietary technology, its expert teams are deeply invested in key sectors of the economy, including consumer goods and services, financial services, retail, technology, healthcare, public services, and media and entertainment. Maru/Marchbox provides organizations with the tools and insights to connect with the people that matter most, so they can build and maintain a competitive advantage. 

In 2019, Maru/Matchbox released a series of innovative research solutions. 

• Digital Media Measurement is a campaign evaluation approach that enables clients to better understand how content, channels and brands interact to deliver effective communication. 
• Creative Insight measures people’s implicit and explicit responses to advertising, giving clients a complete picture of how their ad is working. It is designed to evaluate any type of ad or brand communication, across all channels, with best-in-class benchmarks.
• Lissted analyzes how members of communities relevant to clients react to content, tweets and even websites. 
• Brand Emotion utilizes visual semiotics to identify and leverage the emotional profile of a brand. 

Maru/Matchbox continues to demonstrate innovation and thought leadership through relentless publication of articles and whitepapers.

42. Chadwick Martin Bailey (CMB)

Founded: 1984 2019 U.S. revenue: $28.7 million Percent change from 2018: 20.6% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: — Percent from outside U.S.: — 2019 worldwide revenue: $28.7 million U.S. employees: 90

CMB is a research and strategy firm, helping the world’s leading brands engage, innovate and grow amid deep disruption. The company leverages the best of advanced analytics, consumer psychology and market strategy to tackle critical business initiatives, including market identification, segmentation, brand health, loyalty and advocacy, and product and service development.

For more than 35 years, CMB has helped the most successful brands and their executives give voice to their market through a relentless business decision focus, creative problem-solving and storytelling, deeply consultative approach and flawless execution. With dedicated financial services, media and entertainment, tech and telecom, retail and healthcare practices, CMB’s expert teams understand the complex and evolving technological, social, cultural and economic forces that drive disruption and create opportunity.

In 2020, CMB continued its growth trajectory, including building expertise in gaming and digital platforms and expanding its qualitative and advanced analytics teams. A thought leader in the application of consumer psychology to real world business issues, CMB conducted self-funded research among tens of thousands of consumers to capture the four core benefits that motivate decision-making—identity, emotion, social and functional—providing an in-depth look at more than 80 global brands. Further self-funded research explored the accelerating journey and path to purchase of today’s gamers.

41. Screen Engine/ASI

Founded: 2010 2019 U.S. revenue: $33 million Percent change from 2018: 10% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $1.9 million Percent from outside U.S.: 5.4% 2019 worldwide revenue: $34.9 million U.S. employees: 132

Screen Engine/ASI is a research-based consumer insights firm that stands for delivering its entertainment and media clients actionable insights and recommendations, not simply data. SE/ASI strives to help clients mitigate risk and maximize the potential for success. Through its Motion Picture and TV Groups, SE/ASI works across all distribution platforms for both domestic and internationally produced content. 

The company is centered on assessing the “abilities” of content as it migrates from the earliest stages of development through multi-channel distribution. The Motion Picture Group is the leader in traditional and digital in theater and online recruited audience screenings. Offerings also include PostTrak, a syndicated domestic and international in-theater exit poll, and ScreenExperts, an early assessment of critical response, creative ad testing, positioning and brand studies, custom work, and location-based and online focus group research. A cross-platform team within this group works with home entertainment, over-the-top and gaming clients. 

The TV group is the leader in location-based ViewTrac dial testing of pilots, programs and ongoing series and conducts online dial testing as well. Other offerings include location-based and online focus groups, promo testing, positioning and brand studies, and a variety of custom studies including custom trackers. SE/ASI syndicates Tracktion trackers including a TV tracker, a theatrical movie tracker, a home entertainment tracker and a premium video-on-demand tracker. All groups work in the company’s media lab equipped for biometric and new technology research. When appropriate, SE/ASI engages in advanced analytics techniques including, but not limited to, segmentation, conjoint, maxdiff and TURF analysis. 

40. MarketVision Research

Founded: 1983 2019 U.S. revenue: $33.2 million Percent change from 2018: 2.5% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: — Percent from outside U.S.: — 2019 worldwide revenue: $33.2 million U.S. employees: 140

MarketVision Research is a full-service marketing research firm, providing clients with actionable insights about their markets, customers, brands and products. Research areas of focus include product and portfolio development, pricing, branding, segmentation and customer experience. The company offers a full suite of quantitative and qualitative research capabilities and works across industry groups. These include:

• Optimization and discrete choice modeling as it applies to product and service development, branding, packaging and pricing.
• Online communities that are managed and developed entirely in-house with a focus on improving participant engagement and with additional support for mobile participation.
• Hybrid research, which uses 20 in-house moderators, along with marketing science professionals and global project managers, to facilitate qualitative and quantitative research seamlessly.

39. The Link Group

Founded: 1994 2019 U.S. revenue: $34.2 million Percent change from 2018: 23.9% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $0.3 million Percent from outside U.S.: 0.9% 2019 worldwide revenue: $34.5 million U.S. employees: 85

The Link Group executes research for Fortune 500 firms in the healthcare, retail, CPG and finance industries across both qualitative and quantitative methodologies and around the globe. TLG attributes its success to its core business philosophy: smarter research and better service. Its commitment to smarter research has allowed the company to take a creative, custom approach to its clients’ business needs that results in actionable and insightful reports. TLG delivers better service by maintaining a consistent research team across projects, allowing the team to anticipate and respond to client needs. This business philosophy has resulted in 99% of revenue coming from repeat clients.

This past year, TLG has continued to hone its research approaches to help elevate traditional research methods. For its messaging and positioning work, TLG developed a framework that triangulates quantitative survey data to determine how well messaging concepts will activate, communicate and engage the customer. In its segmentation studies, TLG blends science and art to create models that align with the client’s brand strategic vision by creating differences that are meaningful and actionable from a marketing perspective. TLG has leveraged its knowledge of behavioral economics to develop a validated, proprietary quantitative methodology—LinkEQ—that allows the company to reveal latent emotional associations.

Founded: 1983 2019 U.S. revenue: $34.3 million Percent change from 2018: -1.2% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $1.2 million Percent from outside U.S.: 3.4% 2019 worldwide revenue: $35.5 million U.S. employees: 233

SSRS is a full-service market and survey research firm led by a core of dedicated professionals with advanced degrees in the social sciences. 

SSRS surveys support numerous media and academic partners looking to report on public attitudes and beliefs about a wide range of salient issues such as elections and public policy. SSRS is the polling partner for CNN, and conducts public opinion polling for ABC News, The Washington Post, Politico and CBS News. 

Beyond national polls, SSRS regularly conducts research at a state level, and among subpopulations such as Latinos and political partisans, and specializes in reaching hard-to-reach and low-incidence populations. SSRS has extensive experience in public policy, public affairs and health policy research. Since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, SSRS has completed numerous studies surrounding its implementation and assessing Americans’ attitudes and experiences with the law. 

Since 2016, SSRS conducts the monthly Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll. SSRS is well-known for its weekly telephone Omnibus poll. The firm also offers the SSRS Opinion Panel, which allows clients to conduct probabilistic surveys quickly at low cost. The SSRS/Luker on Trends Sports Poll is the first and longest-running tracking study focusing on sports in the U.S. 

37. BVA Group **

Founded: 1970 2019 U.S. revenue: $36 million Percent change from 2018: 2.6% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $147 million Percent from outside U.S.: 80.3% 2019 worldwide revenue: $183 million U.S. employees: 120

BVA Group is a fast-growing research and consulting firm, an expert in behavioral science, ranked in the top 20 worldwide agencies. BVA brings data to life and converts deep understanding of customers and citizens into behavior change strategies. BVA operates both for public and private clients with methodologies fueled by data science and behavioral science. 

Its FMCG specialist—PRS IN VIVO—is a global leader in packaging and shopper research. PRS IN VIVO helps consumer marketers to succeed through: 

• In-store and online studies to better understand shopper behavior, in both physical and e-commerce shopping contexts.
• Qualitative studies to develop, screen and refine new product, packaging and merchandising concepts.
• Quantitative studies to pre-test and quantify new packaging, merchandising and display systems (for physical stores and e-commerce).
• Volume forecasting and product testing for both innovations and brand restages.
• “Nudge” initiatives to facilitate behavioral change, create new consumer habits and drive category growth. 

BVA Group is a European leader in customer experience research. More than 100 leading brands use BVA’s behavioral insights to provide seamless shopper journeys and design successful new products and services, including solutions from its multi-awarded Global Nudge-Unit.

36. radius | illumination

Founded: 1960 2019 U.S. revenue: $42 million Percent change from 2018: — 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $1 million Percent from outside U.S.: 2.3% 2019 worldwide revenue: $43 million U.S. employees: 127

Radius│illumination is the product of a merger between Radius Global Market Research and Illumination Research in 2018. Together, it’s one of the largest independent custom insights providers in the world. Its focus is on guiding brands at critical points along their growth journey, tackling issues such as identifying compelling innovations, creating relevant customer segmentations and developing strategies for deeper loyalty and engagement.

Radius | illumination partners with Fortune 500 leaders as well as challenger, disruptor and emerging brands in the U.S., Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Its top sectors include financial services, personal care, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, technology, home improvement and durables, media and entertainment, packaged foods, beverage, retail and transportation.

Its 2020 initiatives to fuel brand growth for its clients include:

• Provide agile and robust solutions such as InnovationSprint to accelerate new product and service development.
• Increase its information design capabilities so clients can easily take action on the results.
• Focus on driving deeper insights by combining its advanced analytics strength with immersive customer understanding in its designs.
• Expand solutions through the integration of new technologies and behavioral approaches.

35. Market Force **

Founded: 2005 2019 U.S. revenue: $50 million Percent change from 2018: 2% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $7 million Percent from outside U.S.: 12.3% 2019 worldwide revenue: $57 million U.S. employees: 375

Market Force Information provides location-level customer experience management solutions to protect clients’ brand reputation, delight their customers and make them more money. 

Market Force operates at scale across the globe. Each month, the company:

• Completes more than 100,000 mystery shops.
• Collects, processes and analyzes millions of employee and customer experience surveys.
• Manages more than 100,000 inbound calls to its contact center.
• Hosts more than 1 million user logins on its KnowledgeForce reporting platform.

Market Force’s multi-location solutions provide a robust framework for measuring and improving operational excellence, customer experience and financial KPIs. Measurement channels include mystery shopping, customer experience surveys, contact center calls, social media and employee engagement surveys via the KnowledgeForce technology platform and Eyes:On mobile app. Market Force employs predictive analytics to determine what matters most and the ROI for investing in improvements. The firm takes a dual-headed approach to market research services (e.g., customer segmentation, attitude trial and usage studies and custom research projects) and strategic advisory services to design and implement effective measurement systems and improve performance.

Founded: 1991 2019 U.S. revenue: $52 million Percent change from 2018: 4% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $6 million Percent from outside U.S.: 10.3% 2019 worldwide revenue: $58 million U.S. employees: 400

As a leading customer experience management firm, SMG helps clients get smarter about their customers and employees to drive changes that boost customer loyalty and improve business performance. SMG combines technology and services to collect, analyze and share feedback and behavioral data, so it’s easier for clients to deliver and activate customer insights across their enterprise.

SMG partners with more than 350 brands around the globe to create better customer and employee experiences, which drive loyalty and performance. SMG uniquely combines technology and insights to help clients listen better, act faster and outperform competitors. SMG is a technology-enabled research firm with a global footprint—evaluating more than 150 million surveys annually, in 50 languages across 125 countries. 

Strategic solutions include omniCXTM, Brand Research and Employee Engagement. SMG’s omniCX solution uses multiple research methodologies in capturing solicited and unsolicited consumer feedback across in-store, online, contact center and social channels. Results are aggregated and reported via smg360TM—a real-time, role-based reporting platform providing access to all customer and related data. 

SMG’s research professionals partner with clients to derive business-changing insights. Within Brand Research, SMG offers traditional brand tracking as well as access to dynamic customer and competitor data through market intelligence tool BrandGeek. Fueled by SurveyMini—SMG’s location-based mobile research app—BrandGeek contains consumer feedback and behavioral data relating to more than 4,500 brands across more than 500,000 locations.

33. Hanover Research

Founded: 2003 2019 U.S. revenue: $52.7 million Percent change from 2018: 14.1% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $2.6 million Percent from outside U.S.: 4.7% 2019 worldwide revenue: $55.3 million U.S. employees: 358

Hanover Research is a brain trust designed to level the information playing field. Hanover is made up of hundreds of researchers who support thousands of organizational decisions every year. One of the industry’s fastest-growing companies, Hanover attributes this market success to its unique positioning as the only firm that provides tailored research through an annual, fixed-fee model. 

Hanover serves more than 1,000 organizations and companies worldwide from established global organizations, to emerging companies to educational institutions. Hanover’s research informs decisions at any level and across any department capitalizing on the exposure to myriad industries and challenges. 

Founded in 2003, Hanover operates on an annual fixed-fee model, and partnership provides its clients with access to a team of high-caliber researchers, survey experts, analysts and statisticians with diverse skills in market research, information services and analytics. There is no limit on the type of challenge that can be asked for on the quantitative and qualitative approaches Hanover uses to deliver solutions—most of which are very difficult to replicate internally.

Hanover’s custom research services include:

• Secondary research: market segmentation and evaluation; labor and demographic trends and forecasts; vendor and product reviews; best practices reports. 
• Survey: survey design, administration and analysis; open-ended response coding. 
• Qualitative primary research: focus group design and administration; in-depth interview design, outreach, administration and analysis. 
• Data analysis: data segmentation and mining; conjoint analysis; linear regression; descriptive and predictive analytics; data forecasting and modeling. 

32. Directions Research

Founded: 1988 2019 U.S. revenue: $54.2 million Percent change from 2018: 17.8% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: — Percent from outside U.S.: — 2019 worldwide revenue: $54.2 million U.S. employees: 181

Independently recognized as one of the leading business decision insight firms in the nation, Directions Research combines a highly experienced staff with a unique mix of innovative and proven approaches to answer pressing business issues. Directions and SEEK routinely combine primary and connected data from multiple sources to create holistic and actionable analytic stories for their clients. Through digital dashboards, infographics, written reports and other unique visualizations, the firm communicates its knowledge in a manner that is right for today’s leaders. 

Directions and SEEK excel in innovation, optimization, customer and brand experience, brand strategy, strategic business intelligence and visualization across a wide range of industries. The firm offers B2C and B2B services globally, surveying audiences using a broad selection of data collection techniques and combining those insights with existing client knowledge. Directions’ and SEEK’s staff have an excellent mix of client- and supplier-side experience. The organization allows senior researchers to work with clients on a day-to-day basis.

SEEK (acquired in 2018) is a qualitative insight and innovation consultancy, operating as an independent but connected division of Directions. SEEK empathically connects brands with the humans they serve, transforming the brand-to-consumer relationship into a human-to-human one. The SEEK approach builds brand advocacy for clients with the human-centric approach to innovation, activating empathy as an innate problem-solving capability.

31. Fors Marsh Group (FMG) *

Founded: 2002 2019 U.S. revenue: $57.5 million Percent change from 2018: 22.1% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: — Percent from outside U.S.: — 2019 worldwide revenue: $57.5 million U.S. employees: 263

FMG applies behavioral and data science to improve organizational processes, business solutions and customer experiences. This work is conducted within seven core U.S. markets: health, defense, technology, finance, homeland security, policy and consumer. 

FMG’s work for its clients wins industry and federal awards. FMG has been named as a top market research company by GreenBook and the American Advertising Federation and has been named to the American Marketing Association’s list of top market research companies in the U.S. for five consecutive years. FMG was also a finalist for the American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council’s Igniting Innovation 2018 award for creating an innovative e-learning program that improved program awareness and usability for the General Services Administration’s Center for Acquisition Professional Excellence. 

For 2019 and beyond, FMG is focused on continuing this momentum and expanding in important areas. In its human capital practice, FMG is furthering its work in the cybersecurity industry to help the Department of Defense attract top cyber talent and to protect the nation’s infrastructure. FMG is also expanding its efforts in public service recruiting through new partnerships with the U.S. Army, U.S. National Guard and AmeriCorps. The company is proud that its partnership with these institutions will help shape the future of the U.S. For its health division, FMG is leveraging its deep experience in health communications to fight the opioid crisis by reducing stigma and removing barriers that victims face in receiving help—potentially one of the biggest challenges facing America today. 

30. National Research Group (NRG) **

Founded: 1978 2019 U.S. revenue: $59 million Percent change from 2018: 1.7% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $4 million Percent from outside U.S.: 6.3% 2019 worldwide revenue: $63 million U.S. employees: 200

National Research Group, acquired by Stagwell Media from Nielsen in 2015, is a leading global insights and strategy firm at the intersection of entertainment and technology. Rooted in four decades of industry expertise, the world’s leading marketers turn to NRG for insights into growth and strategy for any content, anywhere, on any device. Working at the confluence of content, culture and technology, NRG offers bold insights for storytellers everywhere. 

Some agencies specialize in qual, others focus on quant—but NRG connects the two disciplines with hybrid teams expert in both modalities. The company is a one-stop, custom consultancy that tailors its approach to solve clients’ biggest challenges. 

The foundation of NRG’s qualitative work is a team of passionate, subject matter experts who connect deeply with consumers in any environment. NRG uses qual to discover the subconscious drivers that fuel our quantitative truths. Its quantitative work is anchored in sophisticated techniques with a focus on agility, creativity and rigor. NRG is method-agnostic and works collaboratively with its clients to solve complex problems in a simple way.

29. Cello Health * **

Founded: 2004 2019 U.S. revenue: $64.5 million Percent change from 2018: 23.3% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $58.5 million Percent from outside U.S.: 47.6% 2019 worldwide revenue: $123 million U.S. employees: 260

Cello Health consists of four global capabilities that enable the company to offer best-in-class services and an integrated partnership approach to its clients. This unique mix of capabilities, combined with its collaborative approach, results in a unique fusion of expertise, providing powerful advisory and implementation solutions.

• Cello Health Insight is a global marketing research company, providing business intelligence to the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors. Cello Health Insight specializes in getting to the heart of its clients’ questions, using a large pool of creative and academic resources and providing design of materials and deliverables through a hand-picked project team—selected to best meet the needs of each individual project.
• Cello Health Consulting is the strategic consulting arm of Cello Health, focused on delivering business results by unlocking the potential within organizations, people, assets and brands. Cello Health Consulting works alongside clients to create practical solutions that ensure buy-in and build relationships. 
• Cello Health Communications combines science, strategy and creativity to unlock the potential of brands and assets. Its services underpin differentiated positioning and deliver brand optimization, focusing on multiple areas of development and launch, through commercial maturity.
• Cello Signal is a full-service digital capability bringing impactful messages alive in communications campaigns, content and film.

28. Macromill Group **

Founded: 2000 2019 U.S. revenue: $68.5 million Percent change from 2018: 2.2% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $260 million Percent from outside U.S.: 79.1% 2019 worldwide revenue: $328.5 million U.S. employees: 275

Macromill Group is a rapidly growing global market research and digital marketing solutions provider bringing together the collective power of its specialist companies to provide innovative data and insights that drive clients’ smarter decisions. Macromill’s industry-leading digital research solutions deliver rapid and cost-effective solutions to the challenges businesses face today. 

The group’s leading business units are Macromill and MetrixLab. Macromill stands at the forefront of innovation, delivering unique marketing solutions. It offers exclusive access to the highest-quality online panels with more than 2 million members. Using its self-developed platform AIRs, Macromill provides full-service online research including automated survey creation and completion, data tabulation and analysis. Today, its business portfolio includes services such as offline quantitative research, mobile research, point-of-service database research (QPR), digital marketing (Accessmill), a DIY survey platform (Questant) and more. 

Metrixlab turns data from online surveys, social media, mobile devices and enterprise systems into valuable business information and actionable consumer insights. This helps leading companies drive product innovation, brand engagement and customer value. Owned and group panels provide expansive access to global respondents in mature and emerging markets. Its teams deliver strategic and tactical decision support by pushing the boundaries of data analysis innovation, combining cutting-edge technology with data science and proven marketing research methodologies. Clients across the globe rely on the company’s hyper-efficient data and insights ecosystem to deliver fast and affordable results.

27. C Space **

Founded: 1999 2019 U.S. revenue: $70 million Percent change from 2018: 2.9% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $18 million Percent from outside U.S.: 20.5% 2019 worldwide revenue: $88 million U.S. employees: 354

C Space, part of the Interbrand Group, is a global customer agency that marries art and science to create rapid customer insight and business change. 

C Space works with some of the world’s best-known brands—such as Walmart, Samsung, IKEA and more—to build customers into the ways companies work and deliver on customer-inspired growth. By building real, ongoing relationships with customers—online and in-person—brands can stay relevant, deliver superior experiences, launch successful products and build loyalty. Through its “customer as a service” approach of research, consulting and communications, C Space helps businesses minimize risk and maximize growth.

The company integrates customers into the ways its clients work. By bringing stakeholders together around the customer, C Space’s clients create greater clarity and alignment in the actions that will most effectively drive customer growth.

C Space’s customized programs are tailored based on specific business needs and include private online communities, immersive storytelling, data and analytics, activation events, innovation projects and business consulting. C Space continues to invest in its people, existing capabilities like data and analytics, as well as new initiatives.

26. Engine Insights**

Founded: 2004 2019 U.S. revenue: $71 million Percent change from 2018: 4.4% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $44 million Percent from outside U.S.: 38.3% 2019 worldwide revenue: $115 million U.S. employees: 240

Engine is a new kind of data-driven marketing solutions company. Powered by data, driven by results and guided by people, Engine helps its clients make connections that count—leading to bottom-line growth, an inspired workplace and business transformation. 

Engine Insights (formerly ORC International) connects traditional market research with cutting-edge products to deliver clients a 360-degree view of their customers, employees and markets. Engine’s extended suite of solutions and products are designed to support business growth, from helping clients understand and outperform the competition to operationalizing both survey and behavioral data to identify, attract, engage and retain their audiences.

Engine Insights’ client services and products include custom research and omnibus surveys; customer experience, customer retention and brand engagement studies; and data management and data analytics. 

These services help clients:

• Think beyond products and services to drive business revenue.
• Use insights to inform more relevant messaging and creative.
• Get a complete 360-degree view of their customers.
• Segment audiences for better targeting.
• Develop the perfect product and take it to market.
• Create unique experiences that engage their customers and keep them loyal for a lifetime.
• Build an internal culture that attracts, retains and engages the best talent.

Founded: 1931 2019 U.S. revenue: $71.1 million Percent change from 2018: 9% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $6.9 million Percent from outside U.S.: 8.8% 2019 worldwide revenue: $78 million U.S. employees: 253

Since 1931, Burke has consistently redefined expectations in the marketing research industry. From segmentation to customer engagement programs, product innovation and brand tracking, Burke prides itself on designing and executing objectives-driven quantitative and qualitative research. Working across a variety of industries, Burke helps its clients gain actionable perspective on their most critical business challenges, providing a range of solutions from agile to integrated strategic decision support.

Today, Burke continues to push the boundaries of what marketing research can be, seamlessly uniting research, strategy and education. Backed by Seed Strategy—its strategic consulting subsidiary—Burke has the capabilities to support its clients throughout every phase of the product or service life cycle, with expertise in strategy, innovation, branding and marketing. In addition, Burke provides comprehensive training on research fundamentals and best practices through the Burke Institute—its dedicated education division and the industry’s leader in research and insights training. Wherever its clients find themselves on the path to success, Burke is uniquely equipped to help them move forward with clarity, confidence and purpose.

Continuing its long tradition of research innovation, Burke recently unveiled two new offerings: Geode|AI, an integrated insights system that analyzes multiple data sources to uncover patterns, relationships and critical insights that are often hidden; and Quantiment, a robust machine-learning solution that jointly extracts richer insights from structured and unstructured data.

24. YouGov *

Founded: 2000 2019 U.S. revenue: $76.8 million Percent change from 2018: 11.8% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $107.5 million Percent from outside U.S.: 58.3% 2019 worldwide revenue: $184.3 million U.S. employees: 212

YouGov is a global provider of analysis and data generated by consumer panels in 42 markets. Its core offering of opinion data is derived from the proprietary YouGov Global Panel of more than 9 million people. The YouGov Global Panel provides the company with thousands of data points on consumer attitudes, opinions and behavior. YouGov captures these streams of data in the YouGov Cube, its unique connected data library that holds more than 10 years of historic single-source data. In 2019, YouGov panelists completed more than 25 million surveys.

YouGov’s data-led offering supports and improves a wide spectrum of marketing activities of a customer base, including media owners, brands and media agencies. YouGov works with some of the world’s most recognized brands.

Its syndicated data products include the daily brand perception tracker, YouGov BrandIndex and the media planning and segmentation tool YouGov Profiles. Its market-leading YouGov RealTime service provides a fast and cost-effective solution for reaching nationally representative and specialist samples. YouGov’s Custom Research division offers a wide range of quantitative and qualitative research, tailored by sector specialist teams to meet users’ specific requirements. YouGov data is delivered through Crunch, the most advanced analytics tool for research data, combining fast processing with drag-and-drop simplicity. YouGov has a strong record for data accuracy and innovation. 

23. Phoenix Marketing International

Founded: 1999 2019 U.S. revenue: $77 million Percent change from 2018: -3.8% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $4.5 million Percent from outside U.S.: 5.5% 2019 worldwide revenue: $81.5 million U.S. employees: 343

Global advertising and brand specialist Phoenix Marketing International operates in all major industries, utilizing modern technology, innovative research techniques and customized approaches to help clients elevate their brand, refine their communications and optimize their customer experience. 

With the launch of Phoenix’s AdPi Brand Effect Platform, clients now have access to continuous advertising measurement and performance improvement insights through a single platform, providing the ability to analyze their campaigns at any stage in the advertising life cycle, and the flexibility to draw upon each piece as needed. Through more than 20 years of experience and testing thousands of ads per month, Phoenix developed 19 category-specific ad measurement models that uncover the drivers and creative attributes that explain the “whys” behind an ad’s creative performance, with forward-looking estimates for ad memorability and brand linkage.

Phoenix continues to evolve its CX solution, launching Competitive Customer Experience, a measurement of how consumers perceive their overall experience with a brand, including key touchpoints along the journey. Grounding recent experiences with a client’s brand, competitor brands and non-categorical benchmarking, Phoenix is able to evaluate brand opinion, understand what drives great CX outside of the category, focus on emotional drivers of brand CX, and provide an external view of culture, consistency and brand promises.

22. Concentrix **

Founded: 1983 2019 U.S. revenue: $95 million Percent change from 2018: 11.8% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $130 million Percent from outside U.S.: 57.8% 2019 worldwide revenue: $225 million U.S. employees: 253

Concentrix is a wholly owned subsidiary of SYNNEX Corp., specializing in technology-enabled customer engagement and improving business performance for clients around the world. With more than 225,000 staff in more than 40 countries, Concentrix provides services to clients in 10 industry verticals: automotive, banking and financial services, insurance, healthcare, technology, consumer electronics, media and communications, retail and e-commerce, travel and transportation, energy and the public sector. 

The Concentrix Voice of the Customer solution combines technology with experience management services provided by its in-house team of hundreds of CX professionals. 

Powered by analytic tools and artificial intelligence, its customer feedback platform ConcentrixCX helps companies listen, analyze and act on omnichannel customer feedback at any point in the customer journey, at scale. Features include data capture and integration, real-time reporting and analytics, and coaching and employee engagement tools. Concentrix continues to invest in enhanced platform functionality—for example, multi-source data expansion of its proprietary text analytics engine, including structured and unstructured customer feedback sources such as surveys, social, messaging, complaints and email. New digital data collection capabilities include a conversational feedback bot and embedded micro-journey surveys. 

Concentrix experience management services range from program management to strategic advisory services and are custom tailored to free clients’ internal teams to focus on transformational impact. Its CX experts specialize in quantitative and qualitative techniques, delivering data-driven insights through solutions such as survey design, relational loyalty research, CX journey analytics, digital channel optimization, customer segmentation, customer effort assessment and integrated CX analytics.

21. Escalent

Founded: 1975 2019 U.S. revenue: $97.1 million Percent change from 2018: -3.4% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $5.5 million Percent from outside U.S.: 5.4% 2019 worldwide revenue: $102.6 million U.S. employees: 352

Escalent is a human behavior and analytics firm specializing in industries facing disruption. The company transforms data and insights into an understanding of what drives human behavior, and it helps businesses turn those drivers into actions that build brands, enhance customer experiences and inspire product innovation. 

Escalent specializes in automotive and mobility, consumer and retail, energy, financial services, health, technology and telecommunications. Focusing on select industries allows Escalent to function as a trusted business partner who knows the challenges its clients face and understands how to engage their most valuable audiences. 

Escalent has three centers of excellence: Qualitative Research combines emerging technologies, anthropology and ethnography to tap into human insights that reveal real needs and potential; Marketing & Data Sciences combine survey, behavioral, transactional and third-party data to solve tough research challenges; and Insight Communities provides private, online platforms for brands to engage with groups of stakeholders to quickly and easily draw insights.

20. dunnhumby **

Founded: 2001 2019 U.S. revenue: $100 million Percent change from 2018: -3.8% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $335 million Percent from outside U.S.: 77% 2019 worldwide revenue: $435 million U.S. employees: 230

Dunnhumby is a customer science company that analyzes data and applies insights for almost 1 billion shoppers across the globe to create personalized customer experiences in digital, mobile and retail environments. Its strategic process, proprietary insights and multichannel media capabilities build loyalty with customers to drive competitive advantage and sustained growth for clients. Dunnhumby uses data and science to understand customers, then applies that insight to create personalized experiences that build lasting emotional connections with retailers and brands. It’s a strategy that demonstrates when companies know and treat their customers better than the competition, they earn more than their loyalty—they earn a competitive advantage.

Dunnhumby was established in the U.S. to help retailers and manufacturers put the customer at the heart of their business decisions. Analyzing data from millions of customers across the country, dunnhumby enables clients to use this insight to deliver a better shopping experiences and more relevant marketing to their customers.

By putting best customers at the center of every decision, dunnhumby’s approach delivers measurable value, competitive edge and even more customer data to fuel ongoing optimization, setting clients up for long-term success.

Dunnhumby serves a prestigious list of retailers and manufacturers in grocery, consumer goods, health, beauty, personal care, food service, apparel and advertising, among others. Clients include Tesco, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Macy’s and PepsiCo.

19. Informa Financial Intelligence**

Founded: 2016 2019 U.S. revenue: $107 million Percent change from 2018: 1.9% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $36 million Percent from outside U.S.: 25.2% 2019 worldwide revenue: $143 million U.S. employees: 500

Informa Financial Intelligence is a leading provider of business intelligence, market research and expert analysis to the financial industry. The world’s top global financial institutions and banks look to Informa Financial Intelligence for its authority, precision and forward-focused analysis. 

Informa Financial Intelligence consists of key research, analysis and industry experts, such as Informa Research Services, EPFR Global, Informa Global Markets, iMoneyNet, Informa Investment Solutions, eBenchmarkers and Mapa Research.

Informa Financial Intelligence provides fund and wealth managers, traders, insurers, analysts, and investment and retail bankers with the intelligent advantage to make informed decisions, understand past trends, forecast future performance, drive profitability and increase returns.

Because of their strong background in the financial industry, the research teams of Informa Financial Intelligence are highly qualified to help financial institutions with their market research needs. Informa’s researchers are experts in benchmarking studies, competitive intelligence, new product development and usability testing, customer and member satisfaction and loyalty research, brand and advertising awareness research, and mystery shopping services for sales and service quality evaluation, legal and match pair testing, compliance, discrimination and misleading sales practices testing. Informa is considered a leader in the use of market research to limit the risk associated with allegations of discrimination, UDAAP (unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices), predatory lending and misleading sales practices.

18. NRC Health

Founded: 1991 2019 U.S. revenue: $113 million Percent change from 2018: 10.8% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $3.6 million Percent from outside U.S.: 3.1% 2019 worldwide revenue: $128 million U.S. employees: 448

NRC Health (formerly National Research Corp.) has helped healthcare organizations illuminate and improve the moments that matter to patients, residents, physicians, nurses and staff for more than 38 years. The company offers performance measurement and improvement services to hospitals, healthcare systems, physicians, health plans, senior care organizations, home health agencies and other healthcare organizations. 

NRC Health solutions help organizations stay at the forefront of healthcare by understanding the totality of healthcare consumer and staff experiences. Primary solutions include: 

• Experience solutions capture personal experiences, while delivering insights to power a new benchmark: n=1. Developing a longitudinal profile of customers’ healthcare wants and needs allows for organizational improvement, increased provider and staff engagement, loyal relationships and personal well-being. 
• The Loyalty Index, composed of seven aspects that combine to provide a 360-degree view of healthcare consumer loyalty—a single, trackable metric to identify emerging trends in consumer behavior and benchmark against peers. 
• Market Insights is a large U.S. consumer database that gives partners access to the opinions of 310,000 healthcare consumers in 300 markets, and access to resources to better understand target audiences and gauge consumer response to communications.
• The Transparency solution calculates star ratings from existing patient, resident and family survey data, and publishes those ratings to organizations’ websites. 
• The Governance Institute supports the efforts of healthcare boards across the nation—to lead stronger organizations and build healthier communities. NRC Health partners with organizations to improve governance efficiency and effective decision-making by providing trusted, independent information, tools and resources to board members, executives and physician leaders. 

17. MaritzCX **

Founded: 1973 2019 U.S. revenue: $118 million Percent change from 2018: — 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $44 million Percent from outside U.S.: 27.2% 2019 worldwide revenue: $162 million U.S. employees: 600

MaritzCX is a software and research company that focuses on customer experience management for big business. The company offers a unique combination of award-winning CX software, industry-leading data and research science, deep vertical market expertise and managed program services. MaritzCX provides a full-service professional CX approach designed to continuously improve the customer experience across an enterprise’s customers, employees, prospects and partners. 

MaritzCX’s research insights include its leading CXStandards competitive benchmarking research that delivers quarterly benchmarks for 55 CX categories across 16 industries. Its CXEvolution study of more than 10,000 practitioners’ feedback informed large enterprises of their CX gaps. 

The company’s focus is to leverage the MaritzCX platform, its industry-leading studies and research services to drive more meaningful experiences between its clients and their customers by adding product and research services and continued thought leadership in the CX market. In addition, MaritzCX has received CMS-certification for HCAHPS surveys, becoming the industry’s first CX platform company to offer an inclusive CX-based patient experience platform.

MaritzCX specializes in solutions for key industries, including automotive, financial services, retail, technology, B2B and more. Its global reach includes more than 900 full-time employees and 800-plus part-time or contract employees in 19 offices around the world. MaritzCX provides solutions to more than 500 clients and 1.6 million users who speak 72 languages in 100 countries. MaritzCX is committed to being its clients’ customer experience research partners.

In March 2020, InMoment acquired MaritzCX.

16. DRG (Decision Resources Group) **

Founded: 1990 2019 U.S. revenue: $140 million Percent change from 2018: 2.2% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $53 million Percent from outside U.S.: 27.5% 2019 worldwide revenue: $193 million U.S. employees: 399

DRG, the Health Science & Analytics Division of Piramal Enterprises, is a global information and technology services company that provides proprietary data and solutions to the healthcare industry. DRG has brought together best-in-class companies to provide end-to-end solutions to complex challenges in healthcare. DRG reframes these challenges, enabling its customers to see the opportunities. Pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical technology and managed care companies rely on this analysis and data to make informed decisions critical to their success.

Framing the current status and future trends in target healthcare markets using data, primary research and secondary research is a core competency of DRG. Product offerings include high‐value analytics, syndicated research, proprietary databases, decision support tools and advisory services.

DRG has a number of key specialties, including syndicated research focused on new therapeutic opportunities; portfolio planning, changing industry dynamics and global treatment patterns; insights and data on physician and consumer healthcare e‐marketing; and proprietary databases and analytics covering more than 90% of the U.S. managed care markets. 

15. Wood Mackenzie **

Founded: 1973 2019 U.S. revenue: $150 million Percent change from 2018: 3.4% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $335 million Percent from outside U.S.: 69.1% 2019 worldwide revenue: $485 million U.S. employees: 337

Wood Mackenzie, a Verisk business, is a leading research and consultancy business for the global energy, chemicals, metals and mining industries. Wood Mackenzie launched in 1923 as a small, relatively unknown, Edinburgh, Scotland-based stockbroker. By the 1970s, it had become one of the top three stockbrokers in the UK, renowned for the quality of its equity research. 

Its success has always been underpinned by the clear and simple principle of providing trusted research and advice that would make a difference to clients. This was true when the first oil report was published by its equity analysts in 1973 and remains just as relevant to it today. So much so that, over the past four decades, Wood Mackenzie has drawn upon its heritage to create a global research and consultancy business that has grown alongside the needs of its clients. 

Having cultivated deep expertise in upstream oil and gas, Wood Mackenzie has carefully broadened its focus to deliver the same level of detailed insight for every interconnected sector of the energy, chemicals, metals and mining industries it now serves around the world. But heritage is more than just history. Its expert analysts and consultants have connected the company to some of the most significant events of our time—creating insight for governments, boards and CEOs who have helped shape the future direction of the world’s natural resources industries and their impact on society. 

14. Material *

Founded: 1973 2019 U.S. revenue: $166.7 million Percent change from 2018: 0.3% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $57.9 million Percent from outside U.S.: 25.8% 2019 worldwide revenue: $224.6 million U.S. employees: 1,038

In 2019, Material (under the name LRW Group) acquired five companies: Killer Visual Strategies, an award-winning visual communication agency based in Seattle; Greenberg Strategy, a Bay Area research and strategy consultancy with a strong presence in the tech community; Karma Agency, a strategic communications firm based in Philadelphia; Salt Branding, a Bay Area consultancy; and T3, an Austin, Texas-based digital marketing agency. This year, Material is taking steps to unify these companies under one brand, integrating their services and building a collaboration that will provide seamless, end-to-end marketing solutions for clients. This year, LRW Group rebranded as Material, formally integrating 10 companies into one modern, unified offering.

Material is a radical collaboration of the top research and analytics firms seamlessly paired with the most creative and strategic marketing agencies, all with the shared mission of igniting growth for the world’s top B2B and B2C brands, from Fortune 500 companies to disruptive start-ups. Material offers a full range of marketing services—from data analytics and insights, to consulting and strategy development, to customer experience programs and creative executions. Material employs a roster of 1,200 strategists, creators, technologists, designers, researchers and storytellers that work side-by-side with clients to solve modern-day problems, build customer loyalty and make an impact on the world around us.

Founded: 1969 2019 U.S. revenue: $173.7 million Percent change from 2018: 0.5% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $52.6 million Percent from outside U.S.: 23.2% 2019 worldwide revenue: $226.3 million U.S. employees: 5,311

ICF is a global consulting services provider with more than 7,000 professionals focused on making big things possible for its commercial and government clients in the U.S., Europe and Asia. 

Clients work with ICF on issues that matter profoundly to their success, whether it’s a product or program that matters to the business or a social issue or policy that matters to the world. ICF offers comprehensive survey research services that empower clients to gain valuable and actionable insights on issues that matter. 

For more than 40 years, ICF has demonstrated design, methodological and statistical knowledge through the implementation of large and complex survey research projects. Its clients consist of U.S. federal, state and local agencies, universities, nonprofits and commercial organizations. 

Its survey research services include: 

• Analyzing, reporting and presenting findings.
• Conducting surveys through a variety of data collection methods. 
• Designing samples, data collection protocols and instruments.
• Protecting all processes and data through quality assurance and system security.

ICF recently completed the installation of a state-of-the-art, fully integrated and security-enhanced data collection system, allowing the company to securely and most efficiently collect survey research data across all modes. ICF continues to be dedicated to solving the world’s most complex challenges and tackle problems with ingenuity on issues that matter profoundly to its clients.

12. J.D. Power **

Founded: 1968 2019 U.S. revenue: $217 million Percent change from 2018: 3.3% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $113 million Percent from outside U.S.: 34.2% 2019 worldwide revenue: $330 million U.S. employees: 744

J.D. Power is a global leader in consumer insights, advisory services and data and analytics. Those capabilities enable J.D. Power to help its clients drive customer satisfaction, growth and profitability. J.D. Power offers market research, forecasting, consulting, training and consumer surveys of product and service quality, customer satisfaction and buyer behavior. The company’s independent industry benchmark studies, innovative data and analytics products, and customized advisory services provide insights and help companies improve quality, engagement and business performance.

Annual syndicated studies are based on survey responses from millions of consumers and business customers worldwide. The firm does not review, judge or test products and services for its syndicated studies. It relies on the opinions and perspectives of consumers who have used the products and services being rated. 

J.D. Power is most often recognized for its work in the automotive industry, where its metrics have become the industry standard for measuring product quality and customer satisfaction. A team of associates worldwide conducts quality and customer satisfaction research across industries including automotive, financial services, insurance, telecommunications, travel, healthcare utilities and consumer electronics. 

11. Forrester Research Services **

Founded: 1983 2019 U.S. revenue: $233.7 million Percent change from 2018: 32.9% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $65 million Percent from outside U.S.: 21.8% 2019 worldwide revenue: $298.7 million U.S. employees: 525

Forrester Research Services is the research component of Forrester, one of the most influential research and advisory firms in the world. Forrester works with business and technology leaders to develop customer-obsessed strategies that drive growth. Its unique insights are grounded in annual surveys of more than 675,000 consumers and business leaders worldwide, rigorous and objective methodologies, and the shared wisdom of its most innovative clients. 

Forrester’s research offerings consist of a library of cross-linked documents that interconnect its playbooks, reports, data, product rankings, best practices, evaluation tools and research archives. Research access is provided through role-based websites that facilitate client access to research and tools that are most relevant to their professional roles, including community tools that allow interaction between and among clients and analysts.

Forrester’s research and decision tools enable clients to better anticipate and capitalize on the disruptive forces affecting their businesses and organizations, providing insights and frameworks to drive growth in a complex and dynamic market. 

Founded: 1934 2019 U.S. revenue: $320 million Percent change from 2018: 3.2% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $1,280 million Percent from outside U.S.: 80% 2019 worldwide revenue: $1,600 million U.S. employees: 860

GfK connects data and science. Innovative research solutions provide answers for key business questions around consumers, markets, brands and media—now and in the future. As a research and analytics partner, GfK promises its clients all over the world “Growth from knowledge.” 

The increasing speed of product innovation, the rise of new channels and emerging customer needs are all part of business today. GfK’s clients are businesses around the globe. To make the best possible business decisions every day, they need more than purely descriptive data—they require actionable recommendations based on advanced analytics and powered by leading-edge technology. GfK is in the unique position to leverage proprietary and third-party data to create indispensable predictive market and consumer insights and recommendations.

GfK’s industry focus provides its market researchers with a thorough understanding of business issues and questions specific to their concerns. Industries covered include automotive, consumer goods, fashion and lifestyle, media and entertainment, retail, technology, and travel and hospitality.

9. comScore * **

Founded: 1999 2019 U.S. revenue: $336.1 million Percent change from 2018: -6.5% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $52.5 million Percent from outside U.S.: 13.5% 2019 worldwide revenue: $388.6 million U.S. employees: 870

ComScore is a global information and analytics company that measures advertising, content and the consumer audiences of each across media platforms. ComScore creates its products using a global data platform that combines information on digital platforms (smartphones, tablets and computers), television and movie screens with demographics and other descriptive information. 

ComScore has developed proprietary data science that enables measurement of person-level and household-level audiences, removing duplicated viewing across devices and over time. This combination of data and methods enables a common standard for buyers and sellers to transact on advertising. This helps companies across the media ecosystem better understand and monetize their audiences and develop marketing plans and products to more efficiently and effectively reach those audiences. ComScore’s ability to unify behavioral and other descriptive data enables it to provide audience ratings, advertising verification and granular consumer segments that describe hundreds of millions of consumers. 

ComScore offers several solutions to help advertisers maximize cross-platform marketing effectiveness—be it measuring brand impact, viewability or ad and audience delivery validation—as well as power cross-platform advertising for better targeting and stronger advertising ROI. ComScore Advanced Audience segments go beyond age and gender to help advertisers better target consumers based on lifestyles, behaviors, demographics and interests. ComScore pioneered this concept in digital, local and national TV. 

8. The NPD Group

Founded: 1966 2019 U.S. revenue: $339.5 million Percent change from 2018: 8.6% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $104.5 million Percent from outside U.S.: 23.5% 2019 worldwide revenue: $444 million U.S. employees: 1,185

NPD’s global information and advisory services help the world’s leading brands achieve data-driven growth. NPD combines data, industry expertise and prescriptive analytics across more than 20 industries to help its clients measure markets, predict trends and improve performance.

NPD syndicated services include retail tracking, distributor tracking and consumer tracking. NPD offers weekly data, store-level enabled data for looking at geographies or custom store groupings and account-level information for participating retailers. Point-of-sale data is collected from more than 600,000 doors worldwide, plus e-commerce and mobile platforms. Consumer information is collected via online surveys and NPD’s Checkout service, which uses receipt harvesting to track and analyze purchasing and behavior. Prescriptive analytics include market forecasting, new product forecasting, pricing and promotion evaluation and segmentation. 

With deep expertise in more than 20 industries, NPD provides thought leadership to the C-suites of many of the world’s leading brands. Senior industry advisors are available for strategy sessions to guide long-range planning or address specific needs, such as preparing for earnings calls. Topics include industry and category performance, the state of retail and winning strategies of best-in-class companies.

7. Westat **

Founded: 1963 2019 U.S. revenue: $590 million Percent change from 2018: 3.5% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $7 million Percent from outside U.S.: 1.2% 2019 worldwide revenue: $597 million U.S. employees: 1,900

Westat is a 100% employee-owned research and professional services company. Westat provides extensive survey design and operations capabilities in support of modern data collection from households, institutions, businesses and individuals. Westat applies multiple modes of data collection and survey management to achieve maximum response rates.

The company’s focus areas and capabilities include: 

• Statistical analysis and methodological research in survey design, experiments and testing, data science and analytics, statistical disclosure control and qualitative research.
• Program, process and outcome evaluation using diverse methodologies from design to implementation to guide each program to success.
• Health research, including behavioral and mental health, clinical studies and clinical trials, public and international health, healthcare delivery, patient safety and health communications campaigns.
• Social policy research and technical assistance for implementing innovative evaluation, quality improvement and service delivery systems.
• Education programs for supporting teachers, conducting evaluations and providing technical assistance.
• Transportation studies of travel behaviors, safety and human factors using advanced technologies such as instrumented vehicles and simulators, field observational studies, and online and mobile device-based surveys.

To support its research projects, Westat designs tailor-made approaches for clients as well as invests in many general and specialized IT technologies and products. Westat also provides licensing, training and support for Blaise, a major data collection software system produced by Statistics Netherlands and used internationally. 

Founded: 1975 2019 U.S. revenue: $682 million Percent change from 2018: 16.2% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $1,685 million Percent from outside U.S.: 71.2% 2019 worldwide revenue: $2,367 million U.S. employees: 2,025

Ipsos, through its subsidiaries, engages in collecting, processing and delivering survey data for brands, companies and institutions primarily in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Americas and Asia Pacific. It explores market potential and market trends, tests products and advertising, helps clients build long-term relationships with customers, studies audiences and their perceptions of various media and measures public opinion trends. Ipsos offers advertising research services, including advertising tracking and brand equity evaluation services that help advertisers in the development, evaluation and improvement of their advertising efforts.

It also provides marketing research services that help clients to identify business opportunities and innovation platforms, develop strategies at point of sale, generate insights and ideas, develop and optimize their mix, and model and forecast sales volumes, as well as offers custom innovative products and solutions to address stakeholder experience and brand-building business goals.

In this unique year, Ipsos has remained strong and reaffirmed its ambition and sense of purpose to deliver reliable information for a true understanding of society, markets and people. Ipsos activates this vision for more than 5,000 customers through its presence in 90 markets both globally and locally. Ipsos covers the whole information production and analysis chain, from the collection of raw data to the activation of the insights. It has a solid tradition of innovation expressed by new methodological developments and continuously renewed product range.

5. Information Resources, Inc. (IRI) **

Founded: 1979 2019 U.S. revenue: $815 million Percent change from 2018: 1.9% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $510 million Percent from outside U.S.: 38.5% 2019 worldwide revenue: $1,325 million U.S. employees: 3,639

IRI is a leading provider of big data, predictive analytics and forward-looking insights that help consumer packaged goods, over-the-counter healthcare organizations, retailers, financial services and media companies grow their businesses. A confluence of major external events—a change in consumer buying habits, big data coming into its own, advanced analytics and personalized consumer activation—is leading to a seismic shift in drivers of success in all industries. With the largest repository of purchase, media, social, causal and loyalty data, all integrated on an on-demand, cloud-based technology platform, IRI is empowering the personalization revolution, helping to guide its more than 5,000 clients around the world in their quest to remain relentlessly relevant, capture market share, connect with consumers, collaborate with key constituents and deliver market-leading growth.

In 2019, IRI announced the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning into its leading suite of analytics solutions, retained 100% of its major CPG clients and welcomed new strategic partnerships with top retailers in the U.S. IRI added several innovators to its leadership team while continuing to invest in its employees by providing ongoing training. 

4. Kantar **

Founded: 1993 2019 U.S. revenue: $950 million Percent change from 2018: 2.7% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $2,900 million Percent from outside U.S.: 75.3% 2019 worldwide revenue: $3,850 million U.S. employees: 3,585

Kantar is one of the world’s largest data, insights and consulting companies, bringing together some of the world’s leading research, data and insights expertise. Kantar’s offer covers the breadth of techniques and technologies, from purchase and media data to predicting long-term trends; from neuroscience to exit polls; from large-scale quantitative studies to qualitative research, incorporating ethnography and semiotics. 

In April 2019, all services and offerings of the various Kantar companies were combined under the Kantar brand name. This operational change enables Kantar to build platforms and offers on a global scale and to remove barriers to collaboration and co-creation within the organization to better meet clients’ needs. 

As part of this branding strategy, Kantar launched several initiatives:

• Kantar Marketplace, a global on-demand research and insights store.
• Kantar’s new Brand Guidance System that intelligently integrates validated survey measures with social, search, sales media and behavioral data to provide actionable insights to optimize brand or campaign performance.
• Integration of big data, artificial intelligence and analytical capabilities from across the company into one resource that unlocks deeper insights to fuel growth.

3. Gartner Research **

Founded: 1972 2019 U.S. revenue: $1,800 million Percent change from 2018: 4.7% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $1,474.5 million Percent from outside U.S.: 45% 2019 worldwide revenue: $3,274.5 million U.S. employees: 4,500

Gartner Research delivers independent, objective advice to leaders across an enterprise through subscription services that include on-demand access to published research content, data and benchmarks, and direct access to a network of approximately 2,300 research experts located around the globe. Gartner Research is the fundamental building block for all Gartner products and services. It combines its proprietary research methodologies with extensive industry and academic relationships to create Gartner products and services that address each role across an enterprise. Gartner’s research agenda is defined by clients’ needs, focusing on the critical issues, opportunities and challenges they face every day. Its proprietary research content, presented in the form of reports, briefings, updates and related tools, is delivered directly to the client’s desktop via its website or product-specific portals.

Within the research segment, Global Technology Sales sells products and services to users and providers of technology, while Global Business Sales sells products and services to all other functional leaders, such as supply chain, marketing, human resources, finance, legal and sales. 

2. IQVIA * **

Founded: 2016 2019 U.S. revenue: $2,220 million Percent change from 2018: 8.6% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $2,166 million Percent from outside U.S.: 49.4% 2019 worldwide revenue: $4,386 million U.S. employees: 6,000

IQVIA is a global provider of information, innovative technology solutions and contract research services focused on helping healthcare clients find better solutions for patients. Formed through the 2016 merger of Quintiles and IMS Health, IQVIA applies human data science—leveraging the analytic rigor and clarity of data science to the ever-expanding scope of human science—to enable companies to reimagine and develop new approaches to clinical development and commercialization, speed innovation and accelerate improvements in healthcare outcomes. 

IQVIA has three operating segments: Technology & Analytics Solutions, Research & Development Solutions and Contract Sales & Medical Solutions. Powered by the IQVIA CORE, IQVIA delivers unique and actionable insights at the intersection of large-scale analytics, transformative technology and extensive domain expertise, as well as execution capabilities to help biotech, medical device and pharmaceutical companies, medical researchers, government agencies, payers and other healthcare stakeholders tap into a deeper understanding of diseases, human behaviors and scientific advances, in an effort to advance their path toward cures.

IQVIA has one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of healthcare information in the world, which includes more than 800 million comprehensive, longitudinal, non-identified patient records spanning sales, prescription and promotional data, medical claims, electronic medical records, genomics and social media. Its scaled and growing information set contains more than 35 petabytes of proprietary data sourced from more than 150,000 data suppliers and covering more than 1 million data feeds globally. Based on this data, IQVIA delivers information and insights on more than 85% of the world’s pharmaceuticals, helping its clients run their organizations more efficiently and make better decisions to improve their clinical, commercial and financial performance. 

1. Nielsen **

Founded: 1923 2019 U.S. revenue: $3,875 million Percent change from 2018: 1.6% 2019 non-U.S. revenue: $2,623 million Percent from outside U.S.: 40.4% 2019 worldwide revenue: $6,498 million U.S. employees: 10,300

Nielsen is a global measurement and data analytics company that provides a complete and trusted view of consumers and markets worldwide. Nielsen is divided into two business units: Nielsen Global Media and Nielsen Global Connect. 

Nielsen Global Media provides media and advertising clients with unbiased and reliable metrics that create the shared understanding of the industry required for markets to function, enabling its clients to grow and succeed across the $600 billion global advertising market. Nielsen Global Media helps clients define exactly who they want to reach and optimize the outcomes they can achieve. The company’s cross-platform measurement strategy brings together the best of TV and digital measurement to ensure a more functional marketplace for the industry.

Nielsen Global Connect provides consumer packaged goods manufacturers and retailers with accurate, actionable information and a complete picture of the complex and changing marketplace that brands need to innovate and grow their businesses. Nielsen Global Connect provides data and builds tools that use predictive models to turn observations in the marketplace into business decisions and winning solutions. The business’ data and insights, combined with its open, cloud-native measurement and analytics platform that democratizes the power of data, continue to provide an essential foundation that makes markets possible in the rapidly evolving world of commerce. With Nielsen Global Connect’s set of guiding truths, businesses have the tools to create new opportunities.

* ‘% change’ calculation reflects adjustment of previously reported 2018 U.S. research revenue due to acquisition or divestiture activity or other business change during 2019.

** Some or all figures are not made available by this company so instead are based on research and estimation by the report author.

Diane Bowers is a consultant to research and data analytics businesses and industry associations in the U.S. and internationally. She previously served as the president of CASRO, board chair of the Global Research Business Network, a board member of the Americas Research Industry Alliance and a board member of The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University. She is also a past president of the Market Research Council and the Research Industry Coalition, and a long-time member of American Association for Public Opinion Research, AMA and ESOMAR.

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How To Present Your Market Research Results And Reports In An Efficient Way

Table of Contents

1) What Is A Market Research Report?

2) Market Research Reports Examples

3) Why Do You Need Market Research Reports

4) How To Make A Market Research Report?

5) Types Of Market Research Reports

6) Challenges & Mistakes Market Research Reports

Market research analyses are the go-to solution for many professionals, and for good reason: they save time, offer fresh insights, and provide clarity on your business. In turn, market research reports will help you to refine and polish your strategy. Plus, a well-crafted report will give your work more credibility while adding weight to any marketing recommendations you offer a client or executive.

But, while this is the case, today’s business world still lacks a way to present market-based research results efficiently. The static, antiquated nature of PowerPoint makes it a bad choice for presenting research discoveries, yet it is still widely used to present results. 

Fortunately, things are moving in the right direction. There are online data visualization tools that make it easy and fast to build powerful market research dashboards. They come in handy to manage the outcomes, but also the most important aspect of any analysis: the presentation of said outcomes, without which it becomes hard to make accurate, sound decisions. 

Here, we consider the benefits of conducting research analyses while looking at how to write and present market research reports, exploring their value, and, ultimately, getting the very most from your research results by using professional market research software .

Let’s get started.

What Is a Market Research Report?

A market research report is an online reporting tool used to analyze the public perception or viability of a company, product, or service. These reports contain valuable and digestible information like customer survey responses and social, economic, and geographical insights.

On a typical market research results example, you can interact with valuable trends and gain insight into consumer behavior and visualizations that will empower you to conduct effective competitor analysis. Rather than adding streams of tenuous data to a static spreadsheet, a full market research report template brings the outcomes of market-driven research to life, giving users a data analysis tool to create actionable strategies from a range of consumer-driven insights.

With digital market analysis reports, you can make your business more intelligent more efficient, and, ultimately, meet the needs of your target audience head-on. This, in turn, will accelerate your commercial success significantly.

Your Chance: Want to test a market research reporting software? Explore our 14-day free trial & benefit from interactive research reports!

How To Present Your Results: 4 Essential Market Research Report Templates

When it comes to sharing rafts of invaluable information, research dashboards are invaluable.

Any market analysis report example worth its salt will allow everyone to get a firm grip on their results and discoveries on a single page with ease. These dynamic online dashboards also boast interactive features that empower the user to drill down deep into specific pockets of information while changing demographic parameters, including gender, age, and region, filtering the results swiftly to focus on the most relevant insights for the task at hand.

These four market research report examples are different but equally essential and cover key elements required for market survey report success. You can also modify each and use it as a client dashboard .

While there are numerous types of dashboards that you can choose from to adjust and optimize your results, we have selected the top 3 that will tell you more about the story behind them. Let’s take a closer look.

1. Market Research Report: Brand Analysis

Our first example shares the results of a brand study. To do so, a survey has been performed on a sample of 1333 people, information that we can see in detail on the left side of the board, summarizing the gender, age groups, and geolocation.

**click to enlarge**

At the dashboard's center, we can see the market-driven research discoveries concerning first brand awareness with and without help, as well as themes and celebrity suggestions, to know which image the audience associates with the brand.

Such dashboards are extremely convenient to share the most important information in a snapshot. Besides being interactive (but it cannot be seen on an image), it is even easier to filter the results according to certain criteria without producing dozens of PowerPoint slides. For instance, I could easily filter the report by choosing only the female answers, only the people aged between 25 and 34, or only the 25-34 males if that is my target audience.

Primary KPIs:

a) Unaided Brand Awareness

The first market research KPI in this most powerful report example comes in the form of unaided brand awareness. Presented in a logical line-style chart, this particular market study report sample KPI is invaluable, as it will give you a clear-cut insight into how people affiliate your brand within their niche.

As you can see from our example, based on a specific survey question, you can see how your brand stacks up against your competitors regarding awareness. Based on these outcomes, you can formulate strategies to help you stand out more in your sector and, ultimately, expand your audience.

b) Aided Brand Awareness

This market survey report sample KPI focuses on aided brand awareness. A visualization that offers a great deal of insight into which brands come to mind in certain niches or categories, here, you will find out which campaigns and messaging your target consumers are paying attention to and engaging with.

By gaining access to this level of insight, you can conduct effective competitor research and gain valuable inspiration for your products, promotional campaigns, and marketing messages.

c) Brand image

When it comes to research reporting, understanding how others perceive your brand is one of the most golden pieces of information you could acquire. If you know how people feel about your brand image, you can take informed and very specific actions that will enhance the way people view and interact with your business.

By asking a focused question, this visual of KPIs will give you a definitive idea of whether respondents agree, disagree, or are undecided on particular descriptions or perceptions related to your brand image. If you’re looking to present yourself and your message in a certain way (reliable, charming, spirited, etc.), you can see how you stack up against the competition and find out if you need to tweak your imagery or tone of voice - invaluable information for any modern business.

d) Celebrity analysis

This indicator is a powerful part of our research KPI dashboard on top, as it will give you a direct insight into the celebrities, influencers, or public figures that your most valued consumers consider when thinking about (or interacting with) your brand.

Displayed in a digestible bar chart-style format, this useful metric will not only give you a solid idea of how your brand messaging is perceived by consumers (depending on the type of celebrity they associate with your brand) but also guide you on which celebrities or influencers you should contact.

By working with the right influencers in your niche, you will boost the impact and reach of your marketing campaigns significantly, improving your commercial awareness in the process. And this is the KPI that will make it happen.

2. Market Research Results On Customer Satisfaction

Here, we have some of the most important data a company should care about: their already-existing customers and their perception of their relationship with the brand. It is crucial when we know that it is five times more expensive to acquire a new consumer than to retain one.

This is why tracking metrics like the customer effort score or the net promoter score (how likely consumers are to recommend your products and services) is essential, especially over time. You need to improve these scores to have happy customers who will always have a much bigger impact on their friends and relatives than any of your amazing ad campaigns. Looking at other satisfaction indicators like the quality, pricing, and design, or the service they received is also a best practice: you want a global view of your performance regarding customer satisfaction metrics .

Such research results reports are a great tool for managers who do not have much time and hence need to use them effectively. Thanks to these dashboards, they can control data for long-running projects anytime.

Primary KPIs :

a) Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Another pivotal part of any informative research presentation is your NPS score, which will tell you how likely a customer is to recommend your brand to their peers.

Centered on overall customer satisfaction, your NPS Score can cover the functions and output of many departments, including marketing, sales, and customer service, but also serve as a building block for a call center dashboard . When you’re considering how to present your research effectively, this balanced KPI offers a masterclass. It’s logical, it has a cohesive color scheme, and it offers access to vital information at a swift glance. With an NPS Score, customers are split into three categories: promoters (those scoring your service 9 or 10), passives (those scoring your service 7 or 8), and detractors (those scoring your service 0 to 6). The aim of the game is to gain more promoters. By gaining an accurate snapshot of your NPS Score, you can create intelligent strategies that will boost your results over time.

b) Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

The next in our examples of market research reports KPIs comes in the form of the CSAT. The vast majority of consumers that have a bad experience will not return. Honing in on your CSAT is essential if you want to keep your audience happy and encourage long-term consumer loyalty.

This magnificent, full report KPI will show how satisfied customers are with specific elements of your products or services. Getting to grips with these scores will allow you to pinpoint very specific issues while capitalizing on your existing strengths. As a result, you can take measures to improve your CSAT score while sharing positive testimonials on your social media platforms and website to build trust.

c) Customer Effort Score (CES)

When it comes to presenting research findings, keeping track of your CES Score is essential. The CES Score KPI will give you instant access to information on how easy or difficult your audience can interact with or discover your company based on a simple scale of one to ten.

By getting a clear-cut gauge of how your customers find engagement with your brand, you can iron out any weaknesses in your user experience (UX) offerings while spotting any friction, bottlenecks, or misleading messaging. In doing so, you can boost your CES score, satisfy your audience, and boost your bottom line.

3. Market Research Results On Product Innovation

This final market-driven research example report focuses on the product itself and its innovation. It is a useful report for future product development and market potential, as well as pricing decisions.

Using the same sample of surveyed people as for the first market-focused analytical report , they answer questions about their potential usage and purchase of the said product. It is good primary feedback on how the market would receive the new product you would launch. Then comes the willingness to pay, which helps set a price range that will not be too cheap to be trusted nor too expensive for what it is. That will be the main information for your pricing strategy.

a) Usage Intention

The first of our product innovation KPI-based examples comes in the form of usage intention. When you’re considering how to write a market research report, including metrics centered on consumer intent is critical.

This simple yet effective visualization will allow you to understand not only how users see your product but also whether they prefer previous models or competitor versions . While you shouldn’t base all of your product-based research on this KPI, it is very valuable, and you should use it to your advantage frequently.

b) Purchase Intention

Another aspect to consider when looking at how to present market research data is your audience’s willingness or motivation to purchase your product. Offering percentage-based information, this effective KPI provides a wealth of at-a-glance information to help you make accurate forecasts centered on your product and service offerings.

Analyzing this information regularly will give you the confidence and direction to develop strategies that will steer you to a more prosperous future, meeting the ever-changing needs of your audience on an ongoing basis.

c) Willingness To Pay (WPS)

Our final market research example KPI is based on how willing customers are to pay for a particular service or product based on a specific set of parameters. This dynamic visualization, represented in an easy-to-follow pie chart, will allow you to realign the value of your product (USPs, functions, etc.) while setting price points that are most likely to result in conversions. This is a market research presentation template that every modern organization should use to its advantage.

4. Market Research Report On Customer Demographics 

This particular example of market research report, generated with a modern dashboard creator , is a powerful tool, as it displays a cohesive mix of key demographic information in one intuitive space.

By breaking down these deep pockets of consumer-centric information, you can gain the power to develop more impactful customer communications while personalizing every aspect of your target audience’s journey across every channel or touchpoint. As a result, you can transform theoretical insights into actionable strategies that will result in significant commercial growth. 

Every section of this responsive marketing research report works in unison to build a profile of your core audience in a way that will guide your company’s consumer-facing strategies with confidence. With in-depth visuals based on gender, education level, and tech adoption, you have everything you need to speak directly to your audience at your fingertips.

Let’s look at the key performance indicators (KPIs) of this invaluable market research report example in more detail.

a) Customer By Gender

This KPI is highly visual and offers a clear-cut representation of your company’s gender share over time. By gaining access to this vital information, you can deliver a more personalized experience to specific audience segments while ensuring your messaging is fair, engaging, and inclusive.

b) Customers by education level

The next market analysis report template is a KPI that provides a logical breakdown of your customers’ level of education. By using this as a demographic marker, you can refine your products to suit the needs of your audience while crafting your content in a way that truly resonates with different customer groups.

c) Customers by technology adoption

Particularly valuable if you’re a company that sells tech goods or services, this linear KPI will show you where your customers are in terms of technological know-how or usage. By getting to grips with this information over time, you can develop your products or services in a way that offers direct value to your consumers while making your launches or promotions as successful as possible.

d) Customer age groups

By understanding your customers’ age distribution in detail, you can gain a deep understanding of their preferences. And that’s exactly what this market research report sample KPI does. Presented in a bar chart format, this KPI will give you a full breakdown of your customers’ age ranges, allowing you to build detailed buyer personas and segment your audience effectively.

Why Do You Need Market Research Reports?

As the adage goes, “Look before you leap“ – which is exactly what a research report is here for. As the headlights of a car, they will show you the pitfalls and fast lanes on your road to success: likes and dislikes of a specific market segment in a certain geographical area, their expectations, and readiness. Among other things, a research report will let you:

• Get a holistic view of the market : learn more about the target market and understand the various factors involved in the buying decisions. A broader view of the market lets you benchmark other companies you do not focus on. This, in turn, will empower you to gather the industry data that counts most. This brings us to our next point.
• Curate industry information with momentum: Whether you’re looking to rebrand, improve on an existing service, or launch a new product, time is of the essence. By working with the best market research reports created with modern BI reporting tools , you can visualize your discoveries and data, formatting them in a way that not only unearths hidden insights but also tells a story - a narrative that will gain a deeper level of understanding into your niche or industry. The features and functionality of a market analysis report will help you grasp the information that is most valuable to your organization, pushing you ahead of the pack in the process.
• Validate internal research: Doing the internal analysis is one thing, but double-checking with a third party also greatly helps avoid getting blinded by your own data.
• Use actionable data and make informed decisions: Once you understand consumer behavior as well as the market, your competitors, and the issues that will affect the industry in the future, you are better armed to position your brand. Combining all of it with the quantitative data collected will allow you to more successful product development. To learn more about different methods, we suggest you read our guide on data analysis techniques .
• Strategic planning: When you want to map out big-picture organizational goals, launch a new product development, plan a geographic market expansion, or even a merger and acquisition – all of this strategic thinking needs solid foundations to fulfill the variety of challenges that come along.
• Consistency across the board: Collecting, presenting, and analyzing your results in a way that’s smarter, more interactive, and more cohesive will ensure your customer communications, marketing campaigns, user journey, and offerings meet your audience’s needs consistently across the board. The result? Faster growth, increased customer loyalty, and more profit.
• Better communication: The right market research analysis template (or templates) will empower everyone in the company with access to valuable information - the kind that is relevant and comprehensible. When everyone is moving to the beat of the same drum, they will collaborate more effectively and, ultimately, push the venture forward thanks to powerful online data analysis techniques.
• Centralization: Building on the last point, using a powerful market research report template in the form of a business intelligence dashboard will make presenting your findings to external stakeholders and clients far more effective, as you can showcase a wealth of metrics, information, insights, and invaluable feedback from one centralized, highly visual interactive screen. 
• Brand reputation: In the digital age, brand reputation is everything. By making vital improvements in all of the key areas above, you will meet your customers’ needs head-on with consistency while finding innovative ways to stand out from your competitors. These are the key ingredients of long-term success.

How To Present Market Research Analysis Results?

Here we look at how you should present your research reports, considering the steps it takes to connect with the outcomes you need to succeed:

• Collect your data 

As with any reporting process, you first and foremost need to collect the data you’ll use to conduct your studies. Businesses conduct research studies to analyze their brand awareness, identity, and influence in the market. For product development and pricing decisions, among many others. That said, there are many ways to collect information for a market research report. Among some of the most popular ones, we find: 

• Surveys: Probably the most common way to collect research data, surveys can come in the form of open or closed questions that can be answered anonymously. They are the cheapest and fastest way to collect insights about your customers and business. 
• Interviews : These are face-to-face discussions that allow the researcher to analyze responses as well as the body language of the interviewees. This method is often used to define buyer personas by analyzing the subject's budget, job title, lifestyle, wants, and needs, among other things. 
• Focus groups : This method involves a group of people discussing a topic with a mediator. It is often used to evaluate a new product or new feature or to answer a specific question that the researcher might have. 
• Observation-based research : In this type of research, the researcher or business sits back and watches customers interact with the product without any instructions or help. It allows us to identify pain points as well as strong features. 
• Market segmentation : This study allows you to identify and analyze potential market segments to target. Businesses use it to expand into new markets and audiences. 

These are just a few of the many ways in which you can gather your information. The important point is to keep the research objective as straightforward as possible. Supporting yourself with professional BI solutions to clean, manage, and present your insights is probably the smartest choice.

2. Hone in on your research:

When looking at how to source consumer research in a presentation, you should focus on two areas: primary and secondary research. Primary research comes from your internal data, monitoring existing organizational practices, the effectiveness of sales, and the tools used for communication, for instance. Primary research also assesses market competition by evaluating the company plans of the competitors. Secondary research focuses on existing data collected by a third party, information used to perform benchmarking and market analysis. Such metrics help in deciding which market segments are the ones the company should focus its efforts on or where the brand is standing in the minds of consumers. Before you start the reporting process, you should set your goals, segmenting your research into primary and secondary segments to get to grips with the kind of information you need to work with to achieve effective results.

3. Segment your customers:

To give your market research efforts more context, you should segment your customers into different groups according to the preferences outlined in the survey or feedback results or by examining behavioral or demographic data.

If you segment your customers, you can tailor your market research and analysis reports to display only the information, charts, or graphics that will provide actionable insights into their wants, needs, or industry-based pain points. 

• Identify your stakeholders:

Once you’ve drilled down into your results and segmented your consumer groups, it’s important to consider the key stakeholders within the organization that will benefit from your information the most. 

By looking at both internal and external stakeholders, you will give your results a path to effective presentation, gaining the tools to understand which areas of feedback or data are most valuable, as well as most redundant. As a consequence, you will ensure your results are concise and meet the exact information needs of every stakeholder involved in the process.

• Set your KPIs:

First, remember that your reports should be concise and accurate - straight to the point without omitting any essential information. Work to ensure your insights are clean and organized, with participants grouped into relevant categories (demographics, profession, industry, education, etc.). Once you’ve organized your research, set your goals, and cleaned your data, you should set your KPIs to ensure your report is populated with the right visualizations to get the job done. Explore our full library of interactive KPI examples for inspiration.

• Include competitor’s analysis 

Whether you are doing product innovation research, customer demographics, pricing, or any other, including some level of insights about competitors in your reports is always recommended as it can help your business or client better understand where they stand in the market. That being said, competitor analysis is not as easy as picking a list of companies in the same industry and listing them. Your main competitor can be just a company's division in an entirely different industry. For example, Apple Music competes with Spotify even though Apple is a technology company. Therefore, it is important to carefully analyze competitors from a general but detailed level. 

Providing this kind of information in your reports can also help you find areas that competitors are not exploiting or that are weaker and use them to your advantage to become a market leader. 

• Produce your summary:

To complement your previous efforts, writing an executive summary of one or two pages that will explain the general idea of the report is advisable. Then come the usual body parts:

• An introduction providing background information, target audience, and objectives;
• The qualitative research describes the participants in the research and why they are relevant to the business;
• The survey research outlines the questions asked and answered;
• A summary of the insights and metrics used to draw the conclusions, the research methods chosen, and why;
• A presentation of the findings based on your research and an in-depth explanation of these conclusions.
• Use a mix of visualizations:

When presenting your results and discoveries, you should aim to use a balanced mix of text, graphs, charts, and interactive visualizations.

Using your summary as a guide, you should decide which type of visualization will present each specific piece of market research data most effectively (often, the easier to understand and more accessible, the better).

Doing so will allow you to create a story that will put your research information into a living, breathing context, providing a level of insight you need to transform industry, competitor, or consumer info or feedback into actionable strategies and initiatives.

• Be careful not to mislead 

Expanding on the point above, using a mix of visuals can prove highly valuable in presenting your results in an engaging and understandable way. That being said, when not used correctly, graphs and charts can also become misleading. This is a popular practice in the media, news, and politics, where designers tweak the visuals to manipulate the masses into believing a certain conclusion. This is a very unethical practice that can also happen by mistake when you don’t pick the right chart or are not using it in the correct way. Therefore, it is important to outline the message you are trying to convey and pick the chart type that will best suit those needs. 

Additionally, you should also be careful with the data you choose to display, as it can also become misleading. This can happen if you, for example, cherry-pick data, which means only showing insights that prove a conclusion instead of the bigger picture. Or confusing correlation with causation, which means assuming that because two events happened simultaneously, one caused the other. 

Being aware of these practices is of utmost importance as objectivity is crucial when it comes to dealing with data analytics, especially if you are presenting results to clients. Our guides on misleading statistics and misleading data visualizations can help you learn more about this important topic. 

• Use professional dashboards:

To optimize your market research discoveries, you must work with a dynamic business dashboard . Not only are modern dashboards presentable and customizable, but they will offer you past, predictive, and real-time insights that are accurate, interactive, and yield long-lasting results.

All market research reports companies or businesses gathering industry or consumer-based information will benefit from professional dashboards, as they offer a highly powerful means of presenting your data in a way everyone can understand. And when that happens, everyone wins.

Did you know? The interactive nature of modern dashboards like datapine also offers the ability to quickly filter specific pockets of information with ease, offering swift access to invaluable insights.

• Prioritize interactivity 

The times when reports were static are long gone. Today, to extract the maximum value out of your research data, you need to be able to explore the information and answer any critical questions that arise during the presentation of results. To do so, modern reporting tools provide multiple interactivity features to help you bring your research results to life. 

For instance, a drill-down filter lets you go into lower levels of hierarchical data without generating another graph. For example, imagine you surveyed customers from 10 different countries. In your report, you have a chart displaying the number of customers by country, but you want to analyze a specific country in detail. A drill down filter would enable you to click on a specific country and display data by city on that same chart. Even better, a global filter would allow you to filter the entire report to show only results for that specific country. 

Through the use of interactive filters, such as the one we just mentioned, you’ll not only make the presentation of results more efficient and profound, but you’ll also avoid generating pages-long reports to display static results. All your information will be displayed in a single interactive page that can be filtered and explored upon need.  

• Customize the reports 

This is a tip that is valuable for any kind of research report, especially when it comes to agencies that are reporting to external clients. Customizing the report to match your client’s colors, logo, font, and overall branding will help them grasp the data better, thanks to a familiar environment. This is an invaluable tip as often your audience will not feel comfortable dealing with data and might find it hard to understand or intimidating. Therefore, providing a familiar look that is also interactive and easier to understand will keep them engaged and collaborative throughout the process. 

Plus, customizing the overall appearance of the report will also make your agency look more professional, adding extra value to your service. 

• Know your design essentials 

When you’re presenting your market research reports sample to internal or external stakeholders, having a firm grasp on fundamental design principles will make your metrics and insights far more persuasive and compelling.

By arranging your metrics in a balanced and logical format, you can guide users toward key pockets of information exactly when needed. In turn, this will improve decision-making and navigation, making your reports as impactful as possible.

For essential tips, read our 23 dashboard design principles & best practices to enhance your analytics process.

• Think of security and privacy 

Cyberattacks are increasing at a concerning pace, making security a huge priority for organizations of all sizes today. The costs of having your sensitive information leaked are not only financial but also reputational, as customers might not trust you again if their data ends up in the wrong hands. Given that market research analysis is often performed by agencies that handle data from clients, security and privacy should be a top priority.  

To ensure the required security and privacy, it is necessary to invest in the right tools to present your research results. For instance, tools such as datapine offer enterprise-level security protocols that ensure your information is encrypted and protected at all times. Plus, the tool also offers additional security features, such as being able to share your reports through a password-protected URL or to set viewer rights to ensure only the right people can access and manipulate the data. 

• Keep on improving & evolving

Each time you gather or gain new marketing research reports or market research analysis report intel, you should aim to refine your existing dashboards to reflect the ever-changing landscape around you.

If you update your reports and dashboards according to the new research you conduct and new insights you connect with, you will squeeze maximum value from your metrics, enjoying consistent development in the process.

Types of Market Research Reports: Primary & Secondary Research

With so many market research examples and such little time, knowing how to best present your insights under pressure can prove tricky.

To squeeze every last drop of value from your market research efforts and empower everyone with access to the right information, you should arrange your information into two main groups: primary research and secondary research.

A. Primary research

Primary research is based on acquiring direct or first-hand information related to your industry or sector and the customers linked to it.

Exploratory primary research is an initial form of information collection where your team might set out to identify potential issues, opportunities, and pain points related to your business or industry. This type of research is usually carried out in the form of general surveys or open-ended consumer Q&As, which nowadays are often performed online rather than offline . 

Specific primary research is definitive, with information gathered based on the issues, information, opportunities, or pain points your business has already uncovered. When doing this kind of research, you can drill down into a specific segment of your customers and seek answers to the opportunities, issues, or pain points in question.

When you’re conducting primary research to feed into your market research reporting efforts, it’s important to find reliable information sources. The most effective primary research sources include:

• Consumer-based statistical data
• Social media content
• Polls and Q&A
• Trend-based insights
• Competitor research
• First-hand interviews

B. Secondary research

Secondary research refers to every strand of relevant data or public records you have to gain a deeper insight into your market and target consumers. These sources include trend reports, market stats, industry-centric content, and sales insights you have at your disposal.  Secondary research is an effective way of gathering valuable intelligence about your competitors. 

You can gather very precise, insightful secondary market research insights from:

• Public records and resources like Census data, governmental reports, or labor stats
• Commercial resources like Gartner, Statista, or Forrester
• Articles, documentaries, and interview transcripts

Another essential branch of both primary and secondary research is internal intelligence. When it comes to efficient market research reporting examples that will benefit your organization, looking inward is a powerful move. 

Existing sales, demographic, or marketing performance insights will lead you to valuable conclusions. Curating internal information will ensure your market research discoveries are well-rounded while helping you connect with the information that will ultimately give you a panoramic view of your target market. 

By understanding both types of research and how they can offer value to your business, you can carefully choose the right informational sources, gather a wide range of intelligence related to your specific niche, and, ultimately, choose the right market research report sample for your specific needs.

If you tailor your market research report format to the type of research you conduct, you will present your visualizations in a way that provides the right people with the right insights, rather than throwing bundles of facts and figures on the wall, hoping that some of them stick.

Taking ample time to explore a range of primary and secondary sources will give your discoveries genuine context. By doing so, you will have a wealth of actionable consumer and competitor insights at your disposal at every stage of your organization’s development (a priceless weapon in an increasingly competitive digital age). 

Dynamic market research is the cornerstone of business development, and a dashboard builder is the vessel that brings these all-important insights to life. Once you get into that mindset, you will ensure that your research results always deliver maximum value.

Common Challenges & Mistakes Of Market Research Reporting & Analysis

We’ve explored different types of market research analysis examples and considered how to conduct effective research. Now, it’s time to look at the key mistakes of market research reporting.  Let’s start with the mistakes.

The mistakes

One of the biggest mistakes that stunt the success of a company’s market research efforts is strategy. Without taking the time to gather an adequate mix of insights from various sources and define your key aims or goals, your processes will become disjointed. You will also suffer from a severe lack of organizational vision.

For your market research-centric strategy to work, everyone within the company must be on the same page. Your core aims and objectives must align throughout the business, and everyone must be clear on their specific role. If you try to craft a collaborative strategy and decide on your informational sources from the very start of your journey, your strategy will deliver true growth and intelligence.

• Measurement

Another classic market research mistake is measurement – or, more accurately, a lack of precise measurement. When embarking on market intelligence gathering processes, many companies fail to select the right KPIs and set the correct benchmarks for the task at hand. Without clearly defined goals, many organizations end up with a market analysis report format that offers little or no value in terms of decision-making or market insights.

To drive growth with your market research efforts, you must set clearly defined KPIs that align with your specific goals, aims, and desired outcomes.

• Competition

A common mistake among many new or scaling companies is failing to explore and examine the competition. This will leave you with gaping informational blindspots. To truly benefit from market research, you must gather valuable nuggets of information from every key source available. Rather than solely looking at your consumers and the wider market (which is incredibly important), you should take the time to see what approach your direct competitors have adopted while getting to grips with the content and communications.

One of the most effective ways of doing so (and avoiding such a monumental market research mistake) is by signing up for your competitors’ mailing lists, downloading their apps, and examining their social media content. This will give you inspiration for your own efforts while allowing you to exploit any gaps in the market that your competitors are failing to fill.

The challenges

• Informational quality

We may have an almost infinite wealth of informational insights at our fingertips, but when it comes to market research, knowing which information to trust can prove an uphill struggle.

When working with metrics, many companies risk connecting with inaccurate insights or leading to a fruitless informational rabbit hole, wasting valuable time and resources in the process. To avoid such a mishap, working with a trusted modern market research and analysis sample is the only way forward.

• Senior buy-in

Another pressing market research challenge that stunts organizational growth is the simple case of senior buy-in. While almost every senior decision-maker knows that market research is an essential component of a successful commercial strategy, many are reluctant to invest an ample amount of time or money in the pursuit.

The best way to overcome such a challenge is by building a case that defines exactly how your market research strategies will offer a healthy ROI to every key aspect of the organization, from marketing and sales to customer experience (CX) and beyond.

• Response rates

Low interview, focus group, or poll response rates can have a serious impact on the success and value of your market research strategy. Even with adequate senior buy-in, you can’t always guarantee that you will get enough responses from early-round interviews or poll requests. If you don’t, your market research discoveries run the risk of being shallow or offering little in the way of actionable insight.

To overcome this common challenge, you can improve the incentive you offer your market research prospects while networking across various platforms to discover new contact opportunities. Changing the tone of voice of your ads or emails will also help boost your consumer or client response rates.

Bringing Your Reports a Step Further

Even if it is still widespread for market-style research results presentation, using PowerPoint at this stage is a hassle and presents many downsides and complications. When busy managers or short-on-time top executives grab a report, they want a quick overview that gives them an idea of the results and the big picture that addresses the objectives: they need a dashboard. This can be applied to all areas of a business that need fast and interactive data visualizations to support their decision-making.

We all know that a picture conveys more information than simple text or figures, so managing to bring it all together on an actionable dashboard will convey your message more efficiently. Besides, market research dashboards have the incredible advantage of always being up-to-date since they work with real-time insights: the synchronization/updating nightmare of dozens of PowerPoint slides doesn’t exist for you anymore. This is particularly helpful for tracking studies performed over time that recurrently need their data to be updated with more recent ones.

In today’s fast-paced business environment, companies must identify and grab new opportunities as they arise while staying away from threats and adapting quickly. In order to always be a step further and make the right decisions, it is critical to perform market research studies to get the information needed and make important decisions with confidence.

We’ve asked the question, “What is a market research report?”, and examined the dynamics of a modern market research report example, and one thing’s for sure: a visual market research report is the best way to understand your customer and thus increase their satisfaction by meeting their expectations head-on. 

From looking at a sample of a market research report, it’s also clear that modern dashboards help you see what is influencing your business with clarity, understand where your brand is situated in the market, and gauge the temperature of your niche or industry before a product or service launch. Once all the studies are done, you must present them efficiently to ensure everyone in the business can make the right decisions that result in real progress. Market research reports are your key allies in the matter.

To start presenting your results with efficient, interactive, dynamic research reports and win on tomorrow’s commercial battlefield, try our dashboard reporting software and test every feature with our 14-day free trial !

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How to Conduct Company Research for Investment?

March 06, 2023

Is a company worth the investment? To answer this question accessing high-quality, reliable data is not just a preference—it's a necessity. Yet, the path to uncovering actionable insights is often littered with obstacles: outdated financial statements, inconsistent metrics, and biased market analyses can cloud judgment, leading investors astray.

In this article, we will discuss the various types of data critical to comprehensive company research, its sourcing, and evaluating both opportunities and risks within potential investments.

Types of information needed for researching a company

Any investment analysis is built on information. Researching a company for investment involves leveraging various types of data.

• Firstly, there is, of course, firmographic information like the company’s location, industry, revenue, and size. This is where the company research kicks off
• Then another crucial piece is Information about the key employees of the company, and it ranges from contact and professional to leisure and interest data. 
• Further on we want to evaluate the growth trends and potential. For example, changes in online job postings or headcount data might indicate the firm’s growth or decline. Meanwhile, technographic data provides insight into how well the company adjusts to the fast-paced technological development.
• Finally, effective company and market research involves news data analysis. This includes company reviews and other direct mentions, as well as market events and industry trends that could affect the firm.

How to conduct effective company research?

Identify the company.

The first step is, of course, identifying the object of our analysis. Thus, researching a company starts with finding out its defining features, for example, whether it is a public or private company. Public companies are easier to investigate as they are traceable by a ticker symbol and are required to disclose financial information. Other key identifiers of the company are its industry, market share, and where it is registered.

Clarify research questions

Research is effective when it has clearly defined goals. Think about what sort of questions need to be answered for you to be able to reach an investment decision about a specific company. Naturally, the main questions will revolve around the company’s products, services, sales, growth trends, management capabilities, and financial health.

Determine which sources are reliable and relevant

You are going to need a lot of data to answer the questions that you have raised. Thus, when choosing data sources, consider what information is relevant to your goals. If you seek to know more about company culture, for example, employer review sites are what you need.

The source should also be reliable. Financial data can come from the company’s annual reports and publicly available governmental sources. Meanwhile, market news should only be retrieved from trusted media outlets. Relevancy and reliability are the most important factors when choosing a third-party data provider.

Utilize data gathering and analysis tools

Finally, you will need to use the right tools to do the company analysis efficiently. While a manual google search or review of the company website might get you started, it won’t take you all the way. 

Aggregating business news and analyzing public sentiment will require considerable automation. Below you will find more information on the tools and resources to use when researching companies.

Essential tools and resources for gathering information

Public companies operating in the US are required to file accounting and other reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). You can use its Electronic Data Gathering and Retrieval (EDGAR) tool to search SEC filings. 

EDGAR allows you to search for keywords in various documents describing everything from the company’s historical performance to current business operations and acquisitions. Thus, when it comes to traditional business data, EDGAR is certainly your friend.

Coresignal’s APIs

When it comes to public web data, Coresignal is the right place to be. Consider trying our APIs which allow searching for multiple data points and retrieve what you need immediately. The APIs will fetch you everything from general firmographics to in-depth information about the company’s employees .

Subscription resources

Library of congress provides multiple subscription-based tools that optimize company research for investment purposes. For example, Mergent Online archives past and present company information that can be searched by financial and textual criteria. 

Meanwhile, Factiva holds premium business publications in 26 languages and from 200 countries all over the world. The complete list of subscription tools as well as the complete guide on how to access and use them can be found on the Library’s website .

Linkedin and other social media websites

When considering investing in a business, you want to know what kind of person or persons are running it, what they are interested in, who they network with, and other information found on social media profiles might make you aware of red flags that would otherwise be missed.

Linkedin is the leading social network where prospects on a job search gather information about a potential employer. It might just as well be used to research a company for investment decision-making. In addition to people’s data, social media pages are sources for public company reviews.

How to apply the gathered information to investment decisions?

Using the analysis results for investment decisions is all about putting it in the context of market trends and the competitive landscape faced by the business. Thus, your findings should be leveraged against the knowledge acquired by deeper market research into similar products and services.

First, look at the detailed information about the company’s performance and financial stance. If everything seems to be good there, check for red flags. News about the company and reviews by employees and customers will be the most useful for this purpose. Information from the news and social media websites will also help when considering market trends that will affect the business in question. 

The final step of the analysis is scrutinizing every publicly available information about the key decision-makers in the company of interest. Insights from their online presence should supplement data on their department, role in the organization, and expertise.

The importance of company research

Investors need to research a company thoroughly before making their decision. Otherwise, they would have to pay not only the price of a bad investment but also that of a lost opportunity to invest in a better business. Only a deep analysis of the organization, its competitors, and industry conditions will give a good idea of its value. 

Additionally, researching a company for its business model and the people that are involved has potential long-term benefits. The knowledge acquired might be used in deciding upon future opportunities when the same people or a similar business is encountered.

Thus, researching businesses is the smart thing to do before arriving at any important investment decision.

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How to Write a Business Report: A Step By Step Guide with Examples

Table of contents

With so much experience under your belt, you already know a lot about business reporting.

So, we don’t want to waste your time pointing out the obvious because we know what you need.

Secrets. Tricks. Best practices.

The answer to how to write a mind-blowing business report that you don’t need to spend hours and days writing.

A business report that will immediately allow you to identify your strengths and weaknesses.

A report that’ll help you learn more about your business and do more accurate forecasting and planning for the future.

We believe we have just that right here.

With this comprehensive guide, you’ll create effective sales, analytical, and informative business reports (and business dashboards ) that will help you improve your strategies, achieve your goals, and grow your business.

So, let’s dive in.

What Is a Business Report?

Importance of creating business reports, types of business reports, what should be included in a business report, how to write a business report: an 11-step guide.

• Business Report Examples

Although there’s a variety of business reports that differ in many aspects, in short, a business report definition would be the following:

A business report is an informative document that contains important data such as facts, analyses, research findings, and statistics about a business with the goal to make this information accessible to people within a company.

Their main purpose is to facilitate the decision-making process related to the future of the business, as well as to maintain effective communication between people who create the reports and those they report to.

A good business report is concise and well-organized, looks professional, and displays the relevant data you can act on. The point is to reflect upon what you’ve achieved so far (typically, over the past month, quarter or year) and to use the data to create a new strategy or adjust the current one to reach even more business goals.

Business reports should be objective and based on the data. When stating the facts, people rely on numbers rather than giving descriptions. For instance, instead of saying “our conversion rate skyrocketed”, you would display the exact percentages that back up that claim.

Business reporting matters for several reasons, among which the most important ones are:

Recognizing Opportunities to Grow

Detecting issues and solving them quickly, evaluating a potential partner, having a paper trail, keeping things transparent for the stakeholders, setting new company goals.

In fact, over half of the companies that contributed to Databox’s state of business reporting research confirmed that regular monitoring and reporting brought them significant concrete benefits.

If you never look back at what you’ve achieved, you can’t figure out what you’ve done well and what you can leverage in the future for even better results.

When you analyze a specific aspect of your business over a specific time period and present the data you gathered in a report, you can detect an opportunity to grow more easily because you have all the information in one place and organized neatly.

Is it time to introduce new products or services? Is there a way to enhance your marketing strategy? Prepare a report. Can you optimize your finances? Write a financial business report . Whatever decision you need to make, it’s easier when you base it on a report.

Reports are essential for crisis management because they can introduce a sense of calmness into your team. Putting everything on paper makes it easier to encompass all the relevant information and when you know all the facts, you can make a more accurate and effective decision about what to do next.

Writing business reports regularly will also help you identify potential issues or risks and act timely to prevent damage and stop it from escalating. That’s why monthly reporting is better than doing it only once a year.

Having an insight into your finances , operations and other business aspects more regularly allows you to have better control over them and mitigate potential risks more effectively.

Different types of business reports may be accessible to the general public. And if they’re not, specific situations may require a company to send them over to the person requesting them. That may happen if you’re considering a partnership with another company. Before making the final decision, you should learn about their financial health as every partnership poses a certain risk for your finances and/or reputation. Will this decision be profitable?

Having an insight into a company’s business report helps you establish vital business relationships. And it goes the other way around – any potential partner can request that you pull a business report for them to see, so writing business reports can help you prove you’re a suitable business partner.

In business, and especially in large companies, it’s easy to misplace information when it’s communicated verbally. Having a written report about any aspect of your business doesn’t only prevent you from losing important data, but it also helps you keep records so you can return to them at any given moment and use them in the future.

That’s why it’s always good to have a paper trail of anything important you want to share with colleagues, managers, clients, or investors. Nowadays, of course, it doesn’t have to literally be a paper trail, since we keep the data in electronic form.

Writing business reports helps you keep things transparent for the stakeholders, which is the foundation of efficient communication between these two sides.

You typically need to report to different people – sometimes they’re your managers, sometimes they’re a client. But your company’s stakeholders will also require an insight into the performance of your business, and relying on reports will help you maintain favorable business relationships. A business report shows you clearly how your company is performing and there isn’t room for manipulation.

Once you set business goals and the KPIs that help you track your progress towards them, you should remember they’re not set in stone. From time to time, you’ll need to revisit your goals and critical metrics and determine whether they’re still relevant.

When you write a business report and go through it with your team members or managers, you have a chance to do just that and determine if you’re efficient in reaching your goals. Sometimes, new insights will come up while writing these reports and help you identify new objectives that may have emerged.

Depending on your goals and needs, you’ll be writing different types of business reports. Here are five basic types of business reports .

Informational Report

Analytical report, research report, explanatory report, progress report.

Informational reports provide you with strictly objective data without getting into the details, such as explaining why something happened or what the result may be – just pure facts.

An example of this type of business report is a statement where you describe a department within your company: the report contains the list of people working in this department, what their titles are, and what they’re responsible for.

Another example related to a company’s website could look like this Google Analytics website traffic engagement report . As we explained above, this report shows objective data without getting too much into the details, so in this case, just the most important website engagement metrics such as average session duration, bounce rate, sessions, sessions by channel, and so on. Overall, you can use this report to monitor your website traffic, see which keywords are most successful, or how many returning users you have, but without further, in-depth analysis.

Analytical reports help you understand the data you’ve collected and plan for the future based on these insights. You can’t make business decisions based on facts only, so analytical reports are crucial for the decision-making process.

This type of business report is commonly used for sales forecasting. For instance, if you write a report where you identify a drop or an increase in sales, you’ll want to find out why it happened. This HubSpot’s sales analytics report is a good example of what metrics should be included in such a report, like average revenue per new client or average time to close the deal. You can find more web analytics dashboard examples here.

From these business reports, you can find out if you will reach your goals by implementing your current strategy or if you need to make adjustments.

Research is critical when you’re about to introduce a change to your business. Whether it’s a new strategy or a new partner, you need an extensive report to have an overview of all important details. These reports usually analyze new target markets and competition, and contain a lot of statistical data.

While not the same, here is an example of an ecommerce dashboard that could help track each part of a campaign in detail, no matter whether you are launching a new product, testing a new strategy, and similar. Similar to a research report, it contains key data on your audience (target market), shows your top-selling products, conversion rate and more. If you are an online store owner who is using paid ads, you can rely on this report to monitor key online sales stats in line with Facebook Ads and Google Analytics. See more ecommerce dashboards here.

As you might guess from its name, you write the explanatory report when it’s necessary for you to explain a specific situation or a project you’ve done to your team members. It’s important to write this report in a way that everyone will be able to understand.

Explanatory reports include elements like research results, reasons and goals of the research, facts, methodology, and more. While not exactly an explanatory report, this example of a HubSpot marketing drilldown report is the closest thing to it, as it helps marketers drill into an individual landing page performance, and identify how good their best landing pages are at converting, or which ones have the best performance.

A progress report is actually an update for your manager or client – it informs them about where you stand at the moment and how things are going. It’s like a checkpoint on your way towards your goal.

These reports may be the least demanding to write since you don’t need to do comprehensive research before submitting them. You just need to sum up your progress up to the point when the report was requested. This business report may include your current results, the strategy you’re implementing, the obstacles you’ve come across, etc. If this is a marketing progress report you can use marketing report templates to provide a more comprehensive overview.

In many companies, progress reports are done on a weekly or even daily basis. Here is an example of a daily sales report from Databox. HubSpot users can rely on this sales rep drilldown business report to see how individual each sales rep is performing and measure performance against goals. Browse through all our KPI dashboards here.

What does a great business report look like? If you’re not sure what sections your report should have, you’ll learn what to include in the following lines.

Business Report Formatting

Different types of reports require different lengths and structures, so your business report format may depend on what elements your report needs to have. For example, progress reports are typically pretty simple, while analytical or explanatory reports are a different story.

However, most reports will start with a title and a table of contents, so the person reading the report knows what to expect. Then, add a summary and move on to the introduction. After you’ve written the body and the conclusion, don’t forget to include suggestions based on your findings that will help your team create an actionable plan as you move forward.

After that, list the references you used while creating the report, and attach any additional documents or images that can help the person reading the report understand it better.

This outline may vary depending on what kind of report you’re writing. Short business reports may not need a table of contents, and informative reports won’t contain any analyses. Also, less formal reports don’t need to follow a strict structure in every situation.

Business Report Contents

When it comes to the contents of your report, keep in mind the person who’s going to read it and try to balance between including all the relevant information, but not overwhelming the reader with too many details.

• The introduction to the report should state the reason why you’re writing it, and what its main goal is. Also, mention what methodology and reporting software you’ve used, if applicable.
• The body of the report is where you’ll expose all your key findings, explain your methodology, share the important data and statistics, and present your results and conclusion.
• The conclusion , similarly to the summary you’ll add at the beginning of the report, briefly singles out the most important points and findings of the report.

If you decide to include more sections like recommendations, this is where you’ll suggest the next steps your team or the company may want to take to improve the results or take advantage of them if they’re favorable.

PRO TIP: Are You Tracking the Right Metrics for Your SaaS Company?

As a SaaS business leader, there’s no shortage of metrics you could be monitoring, but the real question is, which metrics should you be paying most attention to? To monitor the health of your SaaS business, you want to identify any obstacles to growth and determine which elements of your growth strategy require improvements. To do that, you can track the following key metrics in a convenient dashboard with data from Profitwell:

• Recurring Revenue. See the portion of your company’s revenue that is expected to grow month-over-month.
• MRR overview. View the different contributions to and losses from MRR from different kinds of customer engagements.
• Customer overview . View the total number of clients your company has at any given point in time and the gains and losses from different customer transactions.
• Growth Overview . Summarize all of the different kinds of customer transactions and their impact on revenue growth.
• Churn overview. Measure the number and percentage of customers or subscribers you lost during a given time period.

If you want to track these in ProfitWell, you can do it easily by building a plug-and-play dashboard that takes your customer data from ProfitWell and automatically visualizes the right metrics to allow you to monitor your SaaS revenue performance at a glance.

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your Profitwell account with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Note : Other than text, make sure you include images, graphs, charts, and tables. These elements will make your report more readable and illustrate your points.

Whether you’re writing a specific type of business report for the first time or you simply want to improve the quality of your reports, make sure you follow this comprehensive guide to writing an effective business report.

• Do Your Research
• Create an Outline
• Determine Formatting Guidelines
• Think of an Engaging Title
• Write the Introduction
• Divide the Body of the Report into Sections
• Choose Illustrations
• Conclude Effectively
• Gather Additional Documentation
• Add a Summary
• Proofread Your Work

Step 1: Do Your Research

A well-planned report is a job half done. That means you need to do research before you start writing: you need to know who you’re writing for and how much they know about the topic of your report. You need to explore the best business dashboard software and templates you can use for your report.

Also, if you believe you will need additional resources and documents to add in the appendix, you should do it during this phase of report writing.

Step 2: Create an Outline

Once you’ve gathered the resources, it’s time to plan the report. Before you start writing, create an outline that will help you stick to the right structure. A business report is complex writing in which you can get lost very easily if you don’t have a clear plan.

Moreover, the report shouldn’t be complicated to read, so sticking to a plan will allow you to keep it concise and clear, without straying from the topic.

Step 3: Determine Formatting Guidelines

Most companies have their in-house formatting that every official document has to follow. If you’re not sure if such rules exist in your company, it’s time you checked with your managers.

If there arent’ any guidelines regarding formatting, make sure you set your own rules to make the report look professional. Choose a simple and readable format and make sure it supports all the symbols you may need to use in the report. Set up proper headings, spacing, and all the other elements you may need in Word or Google Docs.

Pro tip: Google Docs may be easier to share with people who are supposed to read your business report.

Step 4: Think of an Engaging Title

Even if you’re writing a formal business report, the title should be clear and engaging. Reports are typically considered dull as they’re a part of official business documentation, but there’s no reason why you can’t make them interesting to read. Your title should suit the report topic and be in different font size so the reader can recognize it’s a title. Underneath the title, you should add the name of the author of the report.

Step 5: Write the Introduction

A good introductory paragraph for a business report should explain to the reader why you’ve written the report. Use the introduction to provide a bit of background on the report’s topic and mention the past results if there’s been a significant improvement since your last report.

Step 6: Divide the Body of the Report into Sections

As this will be the most comprehensive part of your report, make sure you separate the data into logical sections. Your report is supposed to tell a story about your business, and these sections (such as methodology, hypothesis, survey, findings, and more) will help the data look well-organized and easy to read.

Step 7: Choose Illustrations

Of course, each of these sections should be followed with charts, graphs, tables, or other illustrations that help you make a point. Survey results are typically best displayed in pie charts and graphs, and these enable the reader to visualize the data better. From the formatting point of view, breaking the long text sections with illustrations makes the report more readable.

Pro tip: Using centralized dashboard solutions like Databox can bring your reporting game to the next level. Sign up for a forever-free trial now to see how you can use Databox to track and visualize performance easier than ever before .

Step 8: Conclude Effectively

Finish your report with a to-the-point conclusion that will highlight all the main data from the report. Make sure it’s not too long, as it’s supposed to be a summary of the body of the report. In case you don’t want to add a specific section for recommendations, this is where you can include them, along with your assessments.

Step 9: Gather Additional Documentation

If you’ve determined what additional documents, images, surveys, or other attachments you may need for your report, now is the time to collect them. Request access to those you may not be able to get on time, so you have everything you need by the deadline. Copy the documents you can use in the original form, and scan the documents you need in electronic format.

Step 10: Add a Summary

The summary is usually at the top of the report, but it’s actually something you should write after your report is completed. Only then will you know exactly what your most relevant information and findings are, so you can include them in this brief paragraph that summarizes your report’s main points.

The summary should tell the reader about the objective of the report, the methodology used, and even mention some of the key findings and conclusions.

Step 11: Proofread Your Work

It may seem like common sense, but this final step of the process is often overlooked. Proofreading your work is how you make sure your report will look professional because errors can ruin the overall impression the reader will form about your work, no matter how great the report is.

Look for any spelling or grammatical mistakes you can fix, and if you’re not sure about specific expressions or terminology, use Google to double-check it. Make sure your writing is to-the-point and clear, especially if you’re writing for people who may not know the industry so well. Also, double-check the facts and numbers you’ve included in the report before you send it out or start your reporting meeting.

Business Report Examples (with Ready-to-Use Templates)

Here, we’re sharing a few business reporting examples that you can copy, along with ready-to-use and free-to-download templates. If you don’t know where to start and what to include in different types of business reports, these business report examples are a great way to get started or at least get some inspiration to create yours.

Activity Report Example

Annual report example, project status report example, financial report example, sales report example, marketing report example.

Note : Each of the business report templates shared below can be customized to fit your individual needs with our DIY Dashboard Designer . No coding or design skills are necessary.

For reporting on sales activity, HubSpot users can rely this streamlined sales activity report that includes key sales metrics, such as calls, meetings, or emails logged by owner. This way, you can easily track the number of calls, meetings, and emails for each sales rep and identify potential leaks in your sales funnel. Check all our sales team activity dashboards here. Or if you are looking for dashboards that track general sales performance, browse through all Databox sales dashboards here.

If you’re preparing for annual reporting, you will benefit from choosing this HubSpot annual performance report . It contains all the relevant metrics, such as email and landing page performance, new contacts, top blog posts by page views, and more. See all our performance dashboard templates here.

Project status reports can be very similar to progress reports. If you’re in need of one of those, here’s an example of a Project overview dashboard from Harvest that shows that can help you create simple, but well-organized report based on metrics that matter: hours tracked, billable hours, billable amount split by team members., and more. Check out more project management dashboard templates we offer here.

Are you creating a financial report? You will find this QuickBooks + HubSpot integration a great choice for a financial performance dashboard that makes creating a report simple. This dashboard focuses on the essential financial report

ting metrics and answers all your revenue-related questions. See all Databox financial dashboards here.

If you’re tracking your sales team’s monthly performance, this sales report template will help you prepare an outstanding report. Check out all the vital productivity KPIs, track your progress towards your goals, and understand well how your current sales pipeline is performing. See all sales performance dashboards we have available here.

Marketing reports can be easily prepared by using this monthly marketing report template . With HubSpot’s reporting, you can determine where your website traffic is coming from, how your landing pages and specific blog posts are performing, and how successful your email campaigns are. Browse all Databox marketing dashboards or marketing report examples here.

Create a Professional Business Report in No Time with Databox

Does creating a business report still sound like a daunting task? It doesn’t have to be with Databox.

In times when we’re all trying to save our time and energy for things that matter rather than scattering valuable resources on tedious, repetitive tasks, it’s critical to optimize your business process. And we want to help you do just that.

Using a business reporting dashboard enables you to track data from all the different tools you’re using – but in one place. With Databox, you can monitor and report on performance in a single dashboard that is optimized for all your favorite devices and you can create streamlined and beautiful dashboards even if you are not that tech-savvy. (no coding or design skills are required).

Automating business reporting has never been easier. And with Databox, you can do exactly that in just a few clicks. Sign up now and get your first 3 business dashboards for free.

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7 Popular Sources for Company Information and Research

by Sarah Schmidt , on August 17, 2023

• Understanding a company’s financial health and key business segments
• Identifying and qualifying potential customers, affiliates, and suppliers
• Searching for investment and acquisition targets
• Capitalizing on a competitor’s weaknesses
• Increasing sales by understanding a clients’ businesses better
• Tracking corporate news such as restructuring, business expansion, and contract wins
• Accessing key employees to initiate business deals

You can easily find detailed company information and research on MarketResearch.com, where we provide thousands of company reports across every major industry around the globe. These company reports are produced by a variety of market research companies, bringing you important information in a quick-to-read downloadable PDF format.

Here are seven popular market research firms featured on our website that produce company reports. If you already have a specific company in mind that you’d like to research, you can type the company’s name into the search bar on our homepage to pull up immediate results.

1.  GlobalData   is a leading source of actionable insight into the consumer goods, technology, and healthcare sectors. GlobalData publishes different types of company profiles; some provide a concise strategic SWOT analysis and financial review, while others are more extensive and outline specific pipeline products in development and ongoing clinical trials.

2. MarketLine   is one of the most prolific publishers of business information today. Its reports are designed to provide a 360-degree view of the company and may include a detailed SWOT analysis, strategy case studies, and merger and acquisition deals. MarketLine presents information in an easy-to-read format, so you can absorb key information in minutes, not hours.

3. Euromonitor International has served as a premier source of worldwide business insights and market analysis for more than four decades. Euromonitor International publishes a wide variety of reports that focus on different types of markets. In addition to broader market reports, Euromonitor publishes company profile reports that offer detailed strategic analysis of a company's business operations, market share, performance, and future prospects.

4. Plunkett Research, Ltd.   is a leading publisher of business and industry research. Its corporate benchmark reports provide deep company-specific financial metrics, benchmarking, industry rankings, and other vital statistics that will save countless hours of research. These reports are designed to benefit investment professionals, lenders, M&A advisors, appraisers, and consultants.

5. NelsonHall is a premier independent research analyst firm in business process outsourcing (BPO). The company provides buy-side and sell-side organizations with deeper research and analyses in major BPO disciplines such as finance and accounting, human resources, procurement, banking, insurance, government, and customer management services. Its reports provide comprehensive and objective analysis of company service offerings, capabilities, and market and financial strength.

6. IDC is a leading provider of market intelligence for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. While many IDC reports focus on broad industry categories, it also publishes market notes and vendor profiles that put company news in context and share observations from major industry events.

7. VPGMarketResearch.com produces a competitive analysis series of reports that includes assessments of more than 1,000 companies worldwide. These reports cover organizational developments, acquisitions and divestitures, marketing tactics, financial results, strengths and weaknesses, and strategic directions. Clients use these reports to benchmark performance, evaluate prospective acquisitions, and validate internal data and insights.

Search our website to find market research reports for your business, or download our free white paper for tips on using syndicated research for identifying business opportunities.

Related Reading

• 6 Key Resources for Company Information
• The Top 7 Strategic Benchmarks to Measure Company Performance
• How to Use Market Research for Onboarding and Training Employees

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Research report guide: Definition, types, and tips

Last updated

5 March 2024

Reviewed by

From successful product launches or software releases to planning major business decisions, research reports serve many vital functions. They can summarize evidence and deliver insights and recommendations to save companies time and resources. They can reveal the most value-adding actions a company should take.

However, poorly constructed reports can have the opposite effect! Taking the time to learn established research-reporting rules and approaches will equip you with in-demand skills. You’ll be able to capture and communicate information applicable to numerous situations and industries, adding another string to your resume bow.

• What are research reports?

A research report is a collection of contextual data, gathered through organized research, that provides new insights into a particular challenge (which, for this article, is business-related). Research reports are a time-tested method for distilling large amounts of data into a narrow band of focus.

Their effectiveness often hinges on whether the report provides:

Strong, well-researched evidence

Comprehensive analysis

Well-considered conclusions and recommendations

Though the topic possibilities are endless, an effective research report keeps a laser-like focus on the specific questions or objectives the researcher believes are key to achieving success. Many research reports begin as research proposals, which usually include the need for a report to capture the findings of the study and recommend a course of action.

A description of the research method used, e.g., qualitative, quantitative, or other

Statistical analysis

Causal (or explanatory) research (i.e., research identifying relationships between two variables)

Inductive research, also known as ‘theory-building’

Deductive research, such as that used to test theories

Action research, where the research is actively used to drive change

• Importance of a research report

Research reports can unify and direct a company's focus toward the most appropriate strategic action. Of course, spending resources on a report takes up some of the company's human and financial resources. Choosing when a report is called for is a matter of judgment and experience.

Some development models used heavily in the engineering world, such as Waterfall development, are notorious for over-relying on research reports. With Waterfall development, there is a linear progression through each step of a project, and each stage is precisely documented and reported on before moving to the next.

The pace of the business world is faster than the speed at which your authors can produce and disseminate reports. So how do companies strike the right balance between creating and acting on research reports?

The answer lies, again, in the report's defined objectives. By paring down your most pressing interests and those of your stakeholders, your research and reporting skills will be the lenses that keep your company's priorities in constant focus.

Honing your company's primary objectives can save significant amounts of time and align research and reporting efforts with ever-greater precision.

Some examples of well-designed research objectives are:

Proving whether or not a product or service meets customer expectations

Demonstrating the value of a service, product, or business process to your stakeholders and investors

Improving business decision-making when faced with a lack of time or other constraints

Clarifying the relationship between a critical cause and effect for problematic business processes

Prioritizing the development of a backlog of products or product features

Comparing business or production strategies

Evaluating past decisions and predicting future outcomes

• Features of a research report

Research reports generally require a research design phase, where the report author(s) determine the most important elements the report must contain.

Just as there are various kinds of research, there are many types of reports.

Here are the standard elements of almost any research-reporting format:

Report summary. A broad but comprehensive overview of what readers will learn in the full report. Summaries are usually no more than one or two paragraphs and address all key elements of the report. Think of the key takeaways your primary stakeholders will want to know if they don’t have time to read the full document.

Introduction. Include a brief background of the topic, the type of research, and the research sample. Consider the primary goal of the report, who is most affected, and how far along the company is in meeting its objectives.

Methods. A description of how the researcher carried out data collection, analysis, and final interpretations of the data. Include the reasons for choosing a particular method. The methods section should strike a balance between clearly presenting the approach taken to gather data and discussing how it is designed to achieve the report's objectives.

Data analysis. This section contains interpretations that lead readers through the results relevant to the report's thesis. If there were unexpected results, include here a discussion on why that might be. Charts, calculations, statistics, and other supporting information also belong here (or, if lengthy, as an appendix). This should be the most detailed section of the research report, with references for further study. Present the information in a logical order, whether chronologically or in order of importance to the report's objectives.

Conclusion. This should be written with sound reasoning, often containing useful recommendations. The conclusion must be backed by a continuous thread of logic throughout the report.

• How to write a research paper

With a clear outline and robust pool of research, a research paper can start to write itself, but what's a good way to start a research report?

Research report examples are often the quickest way to gain inspiration for your report. Look for the types of research reports most relevant to your industry and consider which makes the most sense for your data and goals.

The research report outline will help you organize the elements of your report. One of the most time-tested report outlines is the IMRaD structure:

Introduction

...and Discussion

Pay close attention to the most well-established research reporting format in your industry, and consider your tone and language from your audience's perspective. Learn the key terms inside and out; incorrect jargon could easily harm the perceived authority of your research paper.

Along with a foundation in high-quality research and razor-sharp analysis, the most effective research reports will also demonstrate well-developed:

Internal logic

Narrative flow

Conclusions and recommendations

Readability, striking a balance between simple phrasing and technical insight

How to gather research data for your report

The validity of research data is critical. Because the research phase usually occurs well before the writing phase, you normally have plenty of time to vet your data.

However, research reports could involve ongoing research, where report authors (sometimes the researchers themselves) write portions of the report alongside ongoing research.

One such research-report example would be an R&D department that knows its primary stakeholders are eager to learn about a lengthy work in progress and any potentially important outcomes.

However you choose to manage the research and reporting, your data must meet robust quality standards before you can rely on it. Vet any research with the following questions in mind:

Does it use statistically valid analysis methods?

Do the researchers clearly explain their research, analysis, and sampling methods?

Did the researchers provide any caveats or advice on how to interpret their data?

Have you gathered the data yourself or were you in close contact with those who did?

Is the source biased?

Usually, flawed research methods become more apparent the further you get through a research report.

It's perfectly natural for good research to raise new questions, but the reader should have no uncertainty about what the data represents. There should be no doubt about matters such as:

Whether the sampling or analysis methods were based on sound and consistent logic

What the research samples are and where they came from

The accuracy of any statistical functions or equations

Validation of testing and measuring processes

When does a report require design validation?

A robust design validation process is often a gold standard in highly technical research reports. Design validation ensures the objects of a study are measured accurately, which lends more weight to your report and makes it valuable to more specialized industries.

Product development and engineering projects are the most common research-report examples that typically involve a design validation process. Depending on the scope and complexity of your research, you might face additional steps to validate your data and research procedures.

If you’re including design validation in the report (or report proposal), explain and justify your data-collection processes. Good design validation builds greater trust in a research report and lends more weight to its conclusions.

Choosing the right analysis method

Just as the quality of your report depends on properly validated research, a useful conclusion requires the most contextually relevant analysis method. This means comparing different statistical methods and choosing the one that makes the most sense for your research.

Most broadly, research analysis comes down to quantitative or qualitative methods (respectively: measurable by a number vs subjectively qualified values). There are also mixed research methods, which bridge the need for merging hard data with qualified assessments and still reach a cohesive set of conclusions.

Some of the most common analysis methods in research reports include:

Significance testing (aka hypothesis analysis), which compares test and control groups to determine how likely the data was the result of random chance.

Regression analysis , to establish relationships between variables, control for extraneous variables , and support correlation analysis.

Correlation analysis (aka bivariate testing), a method to identify and determine the strength of linear relationships between variables. It’s effective for detecting patterns from complex data, but care must be exercised to not confuse correlation with causation.

With any analysis method, it's important to justify which method you chose in the report. You should also provide estimates of the statistical accuracy (e.g., the p-value or confidence level of quantifiable data) of any data analysis.

This requires a commitment to the report's primary aim. For instance, this may be achieving a certain level of customer satisfaction by analyzing the cause and effect of changes to how service is delivered. Even better, use statistical analysis to calculate which change is most positively correlated with improved levels of customer satisfaction.

• Tips for writing research reports

There's endless good advice for writing effective research reports, and it almost all depends on the subjective aims of the people behind the report. Due to the wide variety of research reports, the best tips will be unique to each author's purpose.

Consider the following research report tips in any order, and take note of the ones most relevant to you:

No matter how in depth or detailed your report might be, provide a well-considered, succinct summary. At the very least, give your readers a quick and effective way to get up to speed.

Pare down your target audience (e.g., other researchers, employees, laypersons, etc.), and adjust your voice for their background knowledge and interest levels

For all but the most open-ended research, clarify your objectives, both for yourself and within the report.

Leverage your team members’ talents to fill in any knowledge gaps you might have. Your team is only as good as the sum of its parts.

Justify why your research proposal’s topic will endure long enough to derive value from the finished report.

Consolidate all research and analysis functions onto a single user-friendly platform. There's no reason to settle for less than developer-grade tools suitable for non-developers.

What's the format of a research report?

The research-reporting format is how the report is structured—a framework the authors use to organize their data, conclusions, arguments, and recommendations. The format heavily determines how the report's outline develops, because the format dictates the overall structure and order of information (based on the report's goals and research objectives).

What's the purpose of a research-report outline?

A good report outline gives form and substance to the report's objectives, presenting the results in a readable, engaging way. For any research-report format, the outline should create momentum along a chain of logic that builds up to a conclusion or interpretation.

What's the difference between a research essay and a research report?

There are several key differences between research reports and essays:

Research report:

Ordered into separate sections

More commercial in nature

Often includes infographics

Heavily descriptive

More self-referential

Usually provides recommendations

Research essay

Does not rely on research report formatting

More academically minded

Normally text-only

Less detailed

Omits discussion of methods

Usually non-prescriptive 

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50+ Essential Business Report Examples with Templates

By Sara McGuire , May 29, 2023

Reports may not be the most exciting communication format. But they’re important.

To make smart decisions about budgeting, marketing strategies, product development and growth strategies, you can’t rely on gut feeling alone.

And if you’re trying to sway stakeholders, creating a report with a simple, elegant design and creative data visualizations is guaranteed to impress.

This guide will deliver the most essential business report templates you can edit with Venngage, plus design tips and best practices.

Top business report templates (click to jump ahead):

What is a business report?

• Annual reports
• Project status reports
• Budget reports
• Sales reports
• Marketing reports
• Case studies
• White papers
• How to create a business report in 6 steps
• What are the types of business reports
• Business report template FAQs

A business report is a document that delivers important information about a company’s performance, financial health, a particular project, or other aspects that influence its decision-making process. 

Business reports come in various formats, such as PowerPoint presentations and online dashboards, offering more than just traditional files and spreadsheets.

They are crucial for organizations as they provide vital details that guide decision-making for business owners and managers.

They act as GPS, highlighting essential aspects like customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and financial figures. Business reports serve different audiences and purposes, delivering information in a clear and engaging format for both internal and external stakeholders.

Want a quick rundown of some of the business report templates in this blog? Check out this video tutorial:

1. Annual Report Templates

An annual report is an all-encompassing document that allows you to reflect on your company’s past year, including:

• Your company’s mission statement
• Your company’s growth (financially, product-wise, culture-wise)
• Your statement of income and cash flow
• Your various business segments
• Information about the company’s directors and executive officers
• Information about your company’s stock and dividends
• Wins and success stories

A lot of that sounds pretty dry, doesn’t it?

There’s actually a lot to be excited about in that list. You’re talking about how your company has grown, your wins (and maybe a few losses), and what’s on the horizon for the coming year.

You can bring that story to life in your annual report design  and we have business report samples to inspire you.

This annual business report example uses a variety of charts and unique sections like “program highlights” to tell the agency’s story:

Think about how you can represent your company visually:

• Are there photos you can include of your business in action?
• What fonts and colors reflect your business’s personality?
• Are there icons you can use to illustrate certain concepts?

The below annual report design uses an energizing orange and yellow color scheme and cute icons. The format is highly visual and modern. All this reflects a dynamic company that’s optimistic about the future.

This company annual report template uses a mountain motif to reflect the company’s ambitious goals. Take a look at how the different sections of the report (“Strategy”, “Finance” and “Performance”) are color-coded to make the report easier to scan:

In the business report example below, the sleek, modern design with bold color accents reflects design trends in the games industry, which would appeal to stakeholders.

The same design ideas can be applied to an annual report presentation.

Take this annual report presentation for a coffee shop company. The whole design reflects the coziness of a coffee shop, from the softly filtered photos to the old-fashioned font:

A few annual report best practices:

• Create an eye-catching cover for your report
• Tell your company’s story in your annual report design by using thematic visuals, like background images and icons
• Pick a decorative font for headers and pair it with a more minimalist font for body text
• Look for opportunities to visualize data using infographics , charts and pictograms

Related : Our blog post with 55+ annual report templates , plus design tips and best practices.

2. Project Status Report Templates

Communication is central in any project. Consultants, agencies and freelancers especially want to be as transparent as possible. That is why a project status report template is one of the business report examples we are sharing in the article.

A project status report is crucial for communicating updates on what you’ve accomplished and what’s still pending. It also helps you flag any issues, either current or on the horizon. This helps build trust with the client.

The project status report template below communicates key information in an easy-to-understand format.

The above template lets you alert the client if the project is:

• Suffering from budget or scope creep
• On track in terms of schedule
• Healthy or not i.e. milestones completed on schedule, issues resolved

You can add bullet points on the second page to quickly flag key issues that are impacting project success.

Related : Our post on how to write a project management plan .

Simple Project Status Report Templates

Avoid ad-hoc emails or meetings. Use a simple project status report template to present your latest work and keep everyone on the same page, without endless back and forth.

The project status report below would work well for weekly updates.

This template lets you quickly provide an overview to busy stakeholders, who’ll be able to spot key project issues and progress  at a glance.

Project Status Report Template PPT

Big updates might require consultants to communicate the status of a project in person. The below presentation template uses charts and data visualization to get your key points across immediately.

Clients or other stakeholders can see what’s been accomplished and when, while the last slide leaves room for what’s still pending.

A few project status report best practices:

• Include a summary of all important tasks currently in progress. If you have a weekly meeting with the client, this section will probably serve as the jumping-off point for your conversation.
• Stakeholders should be able to tell at a glance if the project is way off schedule or there are too many unresolved issues.
• Document all outstanding problems and concerns. It’s important to have a record in case you run into issues with the client later on.

Related : Our post with 30+  project plan examples plus design tips.

3. Budget Report Templates

This is Business 101: on a quarterly or yearly basis, you should be analyzing your budget, expenses and revenue.

A budget report typically breaks down:

• The different categories of your budget
• The last year or quarter’s spending for each category of your budget
• Areas where you may need to cut or increase spending
• Forecasts for the coming year or quarter

Business Monthly Expenses Template

A full budget report is a bit too dense to pass around a room during a meeting.

But, a visually engaging presentation or one-page summary, like the business report example below, is perfect for keeping your team and stakeholders up to speed.

You can provide an overview of the last period’s spending by category, and highlight the amount you saved or exceeded the budget by.

For example, take a look at this summary budget report slide that uses a thematic background image to make it more engaging:

A quick summary page is also the perfect opportunity to creatively visualize data.

While tables are certainly efficient for comparing amounts spent, you could also use a more unusual visual like a bubble chart. This is because unique visuals make memorable business report examples.

Forecast Budget Template

A forecast is an essential business report that shows where a business is headed financially. It’s not a plan for the future, but rather its current short-term direction .

Use this forecast template to project your businesses’ revenue, and take appropriate action.

A few budget report best practices:

• Clearly label the period the report covers (monthly, quarterly, yearly)
• Provide a brief description of each section of your report, to highlight important insights
• Use a table to compare amounts of money saved vs. spent
• Use bar charts, pie charts and bubble charts to visualize budget allotment
• Highlight important insights using contrasting colors, bold fonts and icons

4. Sales Report Templates

If you aren’t tracking your sales on a weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis, it’s time to start.

Creating a sales report for different time periods can help you identify trends, as well as an opportunity for growth. Regularly reporting on your sales can also help your team stay focused on your goals.

What should be included in a sales report?

A sales report typically covers any of the following data:

• An overview of sales goals and whether or not those goals are being met
• Revenue and expenses
• Sales forecasts for the upcoming periods (month, quarter, year)
• Products and services that are selling the most and ones that are lagging
• Number of leads and conversion rates for a given period
• Any challenges or roadblocks

Weekly sales report template

Consider making  sales reporting  a segment of your weekly team meetings. You may want to provide a quick update for company-wide meetings and a more in-depth report for sales and marketing team meetings.

Here’s an example of what a quick weekly sales report could look like:

The slide simply covers the total sales for the week and compares them to previous weeks to highlight growth.

While this sales report presentation digs deeper into KPIs (key performance indicators) and conversions :

Monthly sales report template

For a monthly, quarterly or yearly sales report, you will probably want to go more in-depth into your metrics as you plan for upcoming periods.

That said, you don’t want to produce a 62-page text-heavy document no one will read. Surprise your client or boss with a fresh new way of doing things that are engaging and concise. You’ll differentiate yourself as an innovator.

For example, the following monthly sales report template uses a variety of charts and tables to keep the data fresh:

The below sales report template will help you visualize key sales metrics using pie charts, bar graphs and tables. The weighted text and icons help organize information in an easily digestible way.

Making your sales report easily accessible will help build your reputation as someone who’s transparent and trustworthy.

A few sales report best practices:

• Clearly identify the time period you are reporting on
• Use descriptive section headers and include descriptions for any charts or tables that need more clarification
• Provide context for readers, explain any major trends they should be aware of, any challenges your team encountered, and how the goals have been impacted
• Use line charts and bar graphs to show changes over time and highlight trends
• Emphasize key metrics in big, bold fonts (for example, the total sales for a given week)
• Use contrasting colors to emphasize keywords or one point on a graph

Related :  5 ways to host a more successful sales demo  by using images.

5. Digital Marketing Report Templates

If you’re a SaaS or e-commerce business, I don’t have to tell you how important digital marketing is. It’s the thing that can make or break many small businesses.

In order to scale and grow your business , it’s important to make informed, deliberate digital marketing decisions.

That means always looking for ways to improve your search rankings, grow your social media engagement, and optimize your ad campaigns.

A ‘ digital marketing report ‘ is a pretty broad term for a report that could be an overview of all your digital marketing channels or one particular channel.

A digital marketing report that covers all your main marketing channels  could include any (or all) of the following data:

• An overview of your current digital marketing strategy
• Your main marketing goals and whether or not they are being met
• An overview of your conversion metrics, including the number of leads, paid vs. organic leads, and your cost per conversion
• An overview of your traffic metrics, organized by channel
• An SEO overview , including any chhttps://growthbarseo.com/anges in rankings for target keywords
• An overview of PPC campaigns you’re running, including clickthrough rate, ROI and cost per click
• An overview of your social media channels, including engagement metrics and leads from specific channels

For example, take a look at this digital marketing report template that dedicates one page to each channel. Note how the company’s branding has also been incorporated into the design by using the brand’s colors and visuals that reflect the computer theme:

In a digital marketing report that focuses on one specific marketing channel, you will probably want to go more in-depth into each metric.

For example, in a social media report, you should cover:

• A comparison of your performance on specific social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (you could try visualizing it with a  comparison infographic )
• Specific engagement metrics like impressions, clicks, subscriber count, likes and comments
• An overview of your followers, including demographic information like age, gender and profession
• Conversion metrics from each specific social media channel

The below social media report visualizes some of these key metrics.

As a consultant, you may be gifted in social media marketing but totally flummoxed by all things design. Look better than you are by using the above template. It’ll help you present your findings in a way that’s effective and professional, while still managing to be playful and engaging.

If you’re concerned about organizing information by channel, here’s an example of a social media marketing report presentation that uses colored columns to make it easy to scan for a specific channel’s metrics:

A few digital marketing report best practices:

• Provide an overview of the performance of all your channels, or a particular channel
• Organize your report by channel (“Organic Search”, “Social Media”, “PPC”) or by specific campaigns/projects
• If your report is long enough, include a table of content to make it easier for readers to navigate your report
• Use bar charts and tables to compare your performance on different marketing channels
• Use icons to emphasize key information and visualize different channels (for example, different social media networks)
• Try to communicate your information concisely and focus on only one topic per page or slide

Related : Our post on what is a marketing plan and how to write and design one for maximum effectiveness.

6. Competitor Analysis Templates

Get the attention of marketers with a competitor analysis report. The best reports show exactly what a company must face off (and beat) to be successful.

A competitor analysis report usually has the following sections:

• Product summary
• Competitor strengths and weaknesses
• Competitor strategies and objectives
• Outlook: is the market growing? Flat? Splintering into niche segments?

The following competitor analysis template neatly organizes these categories into compact sections and highlights important stats. Stakeholders can quickly compare them with their own company’s numbers and get an immediate sense of how they measure up.

Using a pre-designed competitor analysis template is also a great idea for consultants who want to set themselves apart from big consulting firms or boutiques. Visualizing data is a way to set yourself apart as numbers-focused, unique and innovative, as in this business report example.

A few competitor analysis report best practices:

• If you’re listing all competitors, add those entering the market in the next year as well as indirect competitors who sell to the same customers as yours.
• Find customer satisfaction surveys for competitors (usually carried out by trade press) and include their findings.
• Talk to the sales department to get a sense of the competitor’s customers.
• Do informal research on the competitor’s strengths and weaknesses. Talk to journalists who cover this specific industry. Don’t just rely on online information.

Related : Our post on how to create a competitor analysis report (with templates).

7. Case Study Templates

One of the business report examples on our list is the business case study. Though not a report exactly, a case study analyzes a particular aspect of a company or a situation it faced. A consultant may need to write one as part of a corporate training program they’re developing.

Case studies usually focus on one of these situations:

• Startup or early-stage venture
• Merger, joint venture, acquisition
• Market entry or expansion
• New project or product
• Pricing optimization
• Profitability
• Industry landscape
• Growth strategy

What makes case studies unique is how they tell a story. They include background information on the company, a protagonist or key players, the situation and outcomes.

The below case study template has plenty of space for this narrative while using icons and numbers to highlight key details.

Make sure to include a conclusion that contains your key findings. Why did the protagonist make the decisions she made? What were the outcomes? What can we learn from this? Circle back to the key question the case study raises and answer it.

Business case study template

Business case studies are usually teaching tools to show how real companies approached a particular scenario or problem. The case study usually reflects a business theory and demonstrates its real-life application.

For example, the following business case study template shows how a crafts retailer uses earned media to drive engagement-heavy traffic.

This is another version of the above case study. Notice the changes in branding in this business report example that sets it apart from the previous template.

Marketing case study template

Case studies are a powerful form of marketing as they show a potential customer how existing customers are already using your product or service to meet their goals.

For example, this social media marketing case study illustrates how Toy Crates used content marketing to radically increase their sales:

A few case study best practices:

• Outline any constraints and challenges the protagonist of the case study faced that affected her decision (such as a tight deadline).
• Attach supporting documentation, such as financial statements.
• Include an original title, such as “Design Thinking and Innovation at Apple.” The title should mention the company and the subject of the case study.

Related : Our post on how to write and design a case study .

8. Growth Strategy Templates

Setting goals for your business might seem easy in theory… but setting ambitious yet realistic goals can actually be quite challenging.

At Venngage, we follow these 5 steps to set our goals:

• Identifying and set high-level goals.
• Understand which inputs and outputs impact those goals.
• Run experiments to impact those inputs.
• Validate those experiments.
• Foster accountability for the results within the team.

For a more in-depth look at this process read our  growth strategy guide .

For example, if you’re a SaaS company, your high-level goals would probably be a specific number for revenue, a number of daily active users or employee count, like in the business report template below:

Once you’ve identified your high-level goals, the next step is to identify your OKRs (Objective Key Results), the metrics that impact your goals. Generally, you will probably want to break down your OKRs by channel.

So, if one of your goals is to hit a certain number of daily active users, your OKRs could be organized by:

• Acquisition OKRs, like organic traffic and paid traffic
• Conversion OKRs, like conversion rate
• Retention OKRs, like retention rate

Once you’ve identified your OKRs, you can come up with experiments to run that will impact those OKRs.

At Venngage, we use a weekly sprint to plan, execute and analyze our growth experiments. But I know other companies that use longer sprints, like two-week or month-long sprints.

Before you run an experiment, you should validate that it’s an experiment worth running. You can do that by identifying which goal it impacts, what resources the experiment will require, and how much effort you anticipate it will take to run the experiment.

This is the exact marketing sprint validator template that our marketing team uses when we schedule growth experiments:

After you’ve run a growth experiment, it’s extremely important to track your results.

At the end of every sprint, take a good chunk of time to analyze your experiments to see what learnings you can take from them. Then, classify an experiment as a “Winner” or “Loser” based on whether or not the results lined up with your hypothesis.

You can use your results from the sprint that just ended to inform your experiments in the upcoming print.

Here’s an example of a sprint release and results template that you could use. Note how each experiment is owned by a team member to foster accountability for the process and results:

A few growth strategy report best practices:

• Divide your growth strategy reports into color-coded columns based on goals, OKRs, or stages in a sprint
• Use icons like checkmarks and x’s to identify winning experiments and losing experiments
• Include brief descriptions on each template, to make it easy to understand
• Attribute each growth experiment to a team member, to foster accountability for the process and results
• Use your company colors, fonts and logo to maintain consistent branding across all of your communications

Related : Our complete guide to developing a growth strategy checklist.

9. Market Research Report Templates

Even after you’ve launched your business, it’s a good idea to do regular market research. You can use your research to plan and refine your marketing strategies, to identify new prospective customers and product plan.

Market research generally involves gathering information about the needs, problems and wants of your customers. This research can help you come up with your customer personas and specific problems you want to solve with your product or service.

You can conduct market research in two ways:

• Qualitative research (calls, focus groups)
• Survey research

For example, many consultants struggle to get buy-in from various stakeholders. The boss may be constantly changing the scope of the project based on a whim, such as the latest article he’s scoured from the internet! Employees may be set in their ways and resistant to incorporate consultants into their workflow.

One way to get clients on board and build trust is to provide stats and research that support your recommendations.

Here’s a market research business report example that lays out the industry landscape and gives clear guidance on the way forward, all backed up by facts.

This cheerful, icon-heavy market research report should help energize reluctant stakeholders. Packaging new (and sometimes daunting) information in fresh ways can help break through resistance.

You may also want to look at competitor statistics and industry trends. This template includes a competitor case study, including website analytics, and a SWOT analysis :

When it comes to creating your market research report, you may want to do an in-depth overview of all of your market research. Or you may want to focus on one area of your research, such as your survey results.

Survey Report Template

This survey report template helps visualize your findings; the pictogram and chart make the findings easy to understand.

The one-slide market research report identifies the demographics of the survey participants. The report categorizes participants by their jobs, locations, and the topics that they find most engaging. Note how each persona is visualized using an icon:

This business report example highlights how you can give your team and stakeholders a quick overview of your main market and what topics they’re interested in.

One of the purposes of a market research report is to present any conclusions that you came to after analyzing the data.

These could be conclusions about who your target customers are, areas where you can expand your business, and customer needs that aren’t currently being met. The below business report example visualizes this data and also provides space to draw your own conclusions.

Here’s an example of a market research report template that emphasizes key findings in the larger text before providing supporting data:

A few market research report best practices:

• Use icons to illustrate your customer personas
• Use charts and graphs to compare demographic information like customer age, gender, location, and occupations
• Include the main conclusions you came from after analyzing your data
• If your market research report is long enough, include a table of contents
• Include a brief summary of your data collection methods , including the sample size

10. White Paper Templates

White papers are great tools to educate and persuade stakeholders. Consultants can also use them to improve their reputation vis-a-vis big consulting firms and boutique firms or use them as lead magnets in Facebook ads etc.

As always, a polished design is much more likely to engage senior leaders or potential clients.

A business report template or consulting report template is the fastest way to produce something that’s both attractive and easy to understand.

The below consulting report example has a full page dedicated to visuals. It’s the perfect way to break up the text and let it breathe. It also reinforces the information.

Browse our library of thousands of professional, free stock photos to swap in images that suit your topic best. Or upload your own.

Our editor makes it simple to adapt any of our business and consulting report templates to your needs. Change the text, fonts, photos, icons, colors, anything you want.

The next business report template is perfect for marketers and marketing consultants. It has an inviting and fun (but still professional) cover page that quickly communicates the content marketing process using icons.

Venngage has an extensive library of thousands of custom, modern and diverse icons you can swap into the above consulting report example. For instance, you could add the Twitter or Facebook logo or a “thumbs up” icon.

Then, click on the template’s chart or graph (pages four and five) to add your own data.

Struggling with organizing information in your reports?  It’s important for consultants and marketers to find a way to communicate key takeaways, and not overwhelm your reader with data.

The below consulting report template uses filled text boxes and icons on the third page to highlight top findings.

Different-colored headers also help create a hierarchy of information and add more variety to the design.

A few white paper best practices:

• Create an eye-catching white paper cover page using a background in bold color, photos or icons.
• Add a key takeaways section, with a header and bullet points.
• Visualize data using charts and pictograms in order to highlight key data.
• Incorporate your branding into your white paper template (brand colors and logo).

Related : Our blog post with 20+  white paper examples  for even more templates and design tips.

11. Project Plan Templates

A project plan is the best way to keep a project on track.

But, showcasing the steps towards completing a project and showing how each step is actionable and measurable can be tough. 

This is especially difficult if you’re a consultant and you don’t have company templates to rely on.

The below  project plan template is a simple way to visualize what needs to happen, and when.

The above highly organized project plan template uses bar graphs, icons and color-coding to present information in an accessible way. Once you enter the editor, click on the bar graph to customize the schedule.

The project timeline below also uses icons and color-coding to organize information, though in a slightly different way.

Projects suffer when there’s confusion about deadlines and what’s required at each step. This timeline from a business report sample makes it crystal clear what tasks belong to what step and how long each step should take.

A timeline is a perfect way for your team or client to refer back to the project schedule without having to read through tons of text.

You can also revise your timeline as the project progresses to reflect changes in the schedule.

The below consulting report template has a more traditional format for a project plan. Still, like the timelines, this business report sample relies heavily on visuals to create an easily scannable and understandable project overview.

Scope creep is the enemy of any project’s success (and the bane of many consultant’s existence). That’s why it’s so important to define the project from the very beginning. The consulting report template above has a section to do just that.

Of course, projects change and evolve. The project report below will help you raise any issues as soon as they happen and present solutions. That way, stakeholders can make a decision before the project schedule is seriously derailed.

Check out our blog post with  15+ project plan templates  for even more examples and design tips.

A few project plan best practices:

• Plot your project schedule visually using a timeline.
• Use color to categorize tasks and milestones.
• Use icons to illustrate steps in a process.
• Insert charts to track the duration of each phase of a project.
• Pick a flexible template that you can update as the project progresses and things change.

Related : Our post on the four phases of the project life cycle .

12. Business Proposal Templates

A business proposal  is a document that presents your product or service as the solution to a client’s problem. The goal of a business proposal is to persuade a prospective client to buy your product or service. These proposals can be either solicited or unsolicited.

The contents of a business proposal report will vary depending on the problem. 

Typically, a business proposal will include these sections:

• Information about your company (mission, qualifications, competitive edge)
• A detailed description of your client’s problem 
• The cost of your product/service 
• The methodology of how you propose to solve the client’s problem
• A timeline of your approach to solving the problem

A few business report examples and design tips:

Create an engaging title page for your business proposal. Think of it as the cover of a book or a movie poster. This will be your prospective client’s first impression of your business.

Use a design that tells a story about your company’s mission and the people you serve. For example, the cover for this business proposal template shows a happy team working together:

Meanwhile, this simple business proposal example uses icons to illustrate what the company does. The motif is carried throughout the rest of the proposal design:

Use visuals to highlight the emotion behind the problem

Businesses are made up of people, and people are emotionally charged. When identifying the problem, use imagery to highlight the frustration, confusion, or dissatisfaction behind the problem. This will show empathy towards the people you’re proposing your solution to.

This business report sample page from a business proposal contrasts one image to illustrate the “problem” with a more cheerful image for the “solution”:

This marketing business proposal uses a variety of visuals like icons, bold typography and photos to tell a story:

Related : Our post on  consulting proposal templates or our guide to creating a business proposal .

How to create a business report in 6 steps?

Creating a business report can seem daunting, especially if you’ve never done it before. don’t let the word “business” intimidate you – these steps can be used for writing a report in any field!

Step 1: Define the purpose and scope of your report

Know the purpose of your report. Are you aiming to share the results of a project? Analyze performance? Recommend specific actions? Whatever the goal, keep it in mind as you go through the process. Also, consider the scope of your report. Decide what information you’ll be including, as well as what you can leave out.

Example: Let’s say your boss wants a report on your team’s sales performance during the last quarter. Your purpose might be to analyze the numbers and identify trends, areas for improvement, or opportunities for growth.

Step 2: Gather relevant data and information

Now that you know what you’re aiming for, it’s time to gather the information you’ll need. This might involve pulling data from internal systems, interviewing colleagues, or even conducting your research. Remember, the quality of your report depends on the accuracy and relevance of the information you provide, so double-check your sources and make sure you’ve got everything you need.

Example: For our sales performance report, you’ll need to collect data on product sales, individual and team performance, and any factors that may have influenced sales during the quarter.

Step 3: Organize your content

Next up is organizing all that information into a logical and easy-to-follow structure. This will depend on the specific requirements of your report, but some common components are an introduction, executive summary, main body, conclusion, and recommendations. A clear and logical structure helps readers easily understand and follow your report.

Example: In a sales performance report, you might start with an executive summary highlighting sales growth (or declines), outline individual team member’s performance, and then delve into a more detailed analysis of factors and trends.

Step 4: Write the report

When writing your report, start by developing a clear and concise writing style, avoiding jargon and buzzwords. Keep your audience in mind – make sure your report is easily digestible for your intended readers.

Example: When writing about sales performance, share facts and figures in simple terms that everyone can understand. Instead of saying, “Our sales team demonstrated a 12.3% compound annual growth rate,” say, “Our sales team increased their sales by 12.3% each year.”

Step 5: Add visual aids

To make your report more engaging and easier to understand, consider adding visual aids like graphs, charts, or images. These can help break up large blocks of text and highlight key findings or trends.

Example: For your sales performance report, you might create a bar chart showing sales growth over time or a pie chart displaying individual team members’ contributions.

Step 6: Review and refine

Last but not least, review your report. Does it achieve the purpose you set at the beginning? Are there any gaps in the information? Are there areas that could be clearer or more concise? Address any issues you find and refine your report until it meets your goals and is easy to understand for your target audience.

Example: In your sales performance report, if you find that you haven’t adequately explored the impact of a new product launch on sales, go back and add that analysis to provide a more comprehensive view.

What are the types of business reports?

Different types of business reports cater to various purposes, including monitoring performance, making decisions, and more, offering a range of options beyond standard reports.

1. Informational reports

The primary purpose of informational reports is, well, to inform. These reports provide all the nitty-gritty details of specific aspects of your business without any conclusions or opinions. 

Examples include daily sales reports, inventory levels, or even project updates. This is the essential “just the facts, ma’am” type of report you need to stay in the loop.

2. Analytical reports

Analytical reports give you a more in-depth look at the data to help you make decisions. These reports come with all the bells and whistles – charts, graphs, and recommendations based on thorough analysis. Analytical reports are what you whip out when you need to decide whether to invest in a new project, evaluate your marketing efforts, or diagnose challenges within the company. The goal of such a report is to help you make smarter decisions for the growth and development of your business.

3. Summaries & reviews:

If you’re a little short on time and need a quick overview of your business’s performance, summary reports are your best bet. These reports condense the crucial details from other reports at regular intervals (monthly, quarterly, or annually) and present them in a digestible format. 

4. Research reports

As the name suggests, these in-depth reports dig into specific topics or issues relevant to your business. Research reports are great when exploring new markets, considering new product development, or requiring a detailed evaluation of business practices. These reports act as guides for making major decisions that could significantly impact your company’s direction and success.

5. Progress reports

Let’s say you’ve got a fantastic project idea underway. You’ll need to keep track of every stage of it to ensure it’s smooth sailing ahead. Enter progress reports. They track the achievements, setbacks, and future plans of ongoing projects. These are essential for keeping everyone – from employees to investors – in the loop.

Business report template FAQs

1. what are the best practices for creating a business report.

You could open up Google doc, record your metrics and make a few points of analysis, send it to your team and call it a day. But is that the most effective way to report on your findings?

Many people may not even read those types of reports. Not to mention, a plain old report probably won’t impress stakeholders.

It’s important to brand yourself (and stand out from your competition). And then there’s the ever-important need to create buy-in from stakeholders and convince them of your recommendations.

That’s why it pays to make your reports as engaging as possible. That means visualizing data , processes , and concepts to make them easier to understand and more fun to look at, as you’ve seen from the business report examples in this post.

You can do that easily by getting started with a  business report template  or consulting report template .

There are two big reasons why it’s a good idea to create a highly visual business report:

• You will be able to organize, analyze and summarize your findings .
• You will be able to communicate your reports more effectively with your team, stakeholders and customers.

For example, the below business report template shows four different ways you can visualize information. It’s much more captivating and easily digested than a block of text.

And don’t worry about how time-consuming designing a report might be. If you start with a solid business report template, you can repurpose that template over and over again.

Use the template as a framework, then customize your information and design to fit your specific needs. Then, use a  chart tool  to convert cumbersome data into clear visuals.

Just like in the above business report sample, you’ll have a succinct, powerful (and polished) report that stakeholders can understand at a glance.

2. How do you design a business report template?

Incorporate your branding into the design

Part of building a strong brand is using consistent branding across all of your content, both internal and public-facing. You can incorporate your branding into your business report design by importing your logo and using your brand colors and fonts.

Our My Brand Kit feature automatically imports company logos and fonts from any website. You can then apply them to your design with one click.

Stick to only one topic per page or slide

When creating a report, it’s easy to try and cram a bunch of text onto one page. But then you run the risk of creating an impenetrable wall of text.

Instead, focus on only one topic per page or slide. If you find that even that makes your page look too cramped, then try breaking up your information into two pages or looking for ways to better summarize your information .

Put functionality first

When you’re designing a business report, you should look for opportunities to visualize data and creatively present information. That being said, the primary goal of your business report should still be to communicate information clearly.

Use design elements such as icons or fonts  in different sizes, weights and colors to highlight, emphasize and categorize information, not obscure it. If a page you’re working on looks cluttered or confusing, take another stab at it.

Remember that functionality comes first, and that includes using the right visuals for your information.

3. What is the best business report maker?

You can make a business report online using a number of tools. As we have mentioned, a great business report is visually appealing, includes icons, images, clear fonts, easy-to-understand charts and graphs, as well as being branded.

Venngage is the one-stop design solution when it comes to creating reports. The business report examples in this article highlight how easy it is to design a variety of reports for every type of organization and activity. Make design simple by using Venngage.

More business communication guides:

• The Ultimate Guide to Consulting Proposals (2024)
• 20+ White Paper Examples [Design Guide + White Paper Templates]

Easy Guide to Finding Company Information

Easy tips for finding company information, find basic company facts, research a company’s business activities, research industry reports, research the financial performance of publicly traded companies, research not-for-profit companies, other recommended company research guides.

Whether you want to ace a job interview, build a list of prospective customers, or study a company’s investment performance, the first step is to know the best sources of the information you need. This guide can provide some easy starting points to help you accomplish your objective and show you how to find helpful information at the Science, Industry and Business Library .

If you need more help with doing research or using the databases, please approach a librarian at the B. Altman Desk for assistance. Please note that unless otherwise indicated the database is only available onsite at NYPL branches or SIBL.

• New York University: US Company and Industry Information: Home
• Columbia University: Company Information: US and International
• Library of Congress: Doing Company Research

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Home » Research Report – Example, Writing Guide and Types

Research Report – Example, Writing Guide and Types

Table of Contents

Research Report

Definition:

Research Report is a written document that presents the results of a research project or study, including the research question, methodology, results, and conclusions, in a clear and objective manner.

The purpose of a research report is to communicate the findings of the research to the intended audience, which could be other researchers, stakeholders, or the general public.

Components of Research Report

Components of Research Report are as follows:

Introduction

The introduction sets the stage for the research report and provides a brief overview of the research question or problem being investigated. It should include a clear statement of the purpose of the study and its significance or relevance to the field of research. It may also provide background information or a literature review to help contextualize the research.

Literature Review

The literature review provides a critical analysis and synthesis of the existing research and scholarship relevant to the research question or problem. It should identify the gaps, inconsistencies, and contradictions in the literature and show how the current study addresses these issues. The literature review also establishes the theoretical framework or conceptual model that guides the research.

Methodology

The methodology section describes the research design, methods, and procedures used to collect and analyze data. It should include information on the sample or participants, data collection instruments, data collection procedures, and data analysis techniques. The methodology should be clear and detailed enough to allow other researchers to replicate the study.

The results section presents the findings of the study in a clear and objective manner. It should provide a detailed description of the data and statistics used to answer the research question or test the hypothesis. Tables, graphs, and figures may be included to help visualize the data and illustrate the key findings.

The discussion section interprets the results of the study and explains their significance or relevance to the research question or problem. It should also compare the current findings with those of previous studies and identify the implications for future research or practice. The discussion should be based on the results presented in the previous section and should avoid speculation or unfounded conclusions.

The conclusion summarizes the key findings of the study and restates the main argument or thesis presented in the introduction. It should also provide a brief overview of the contributions of the study to the field of research and the implications for practice or policy.

The references section lists all the sources cited in the research report, following a specific citation style, such as APA or MLA.

The appendices section includes any additional material, such as data tables, figures, or instruments used in the study, that could not be included in the main text due to space limitations.

Types of Research Report

Types of Research Report are as follows:

Thesis is a type of research report. A thesis is a long-form research document that presents the findings and conclusions of an original research study conducted by a student as part of a graduate or postgraduate program. It is typically written by a student pursuing a higher degree, such as a Master’s or Doctoral degree, although it can also be written by researchers or scholars in other fields.

Research Paper

Research paper is a type of research report. A research paper is a document that presents the results of a research study or investigation. Research papers can be written in a variety of fields, including science, social science, humanities, and business. They typically follow a standard format that includes an introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion sections.

Technical Report

A technical report is a detailed report that provides information about a specific technical or scientific problem or project. Technical reports are often used in engineering, science, and other technical fields to document research and development work.

Progress Report

A progress report provides an update on the progress of a research project or program over a specific period of time. Progress reports are typically used to communicate the status of a project to stakeholders, funders, or project managers.

Feasibility Report

A feasibility report assesses the feasibility of a proposed project or plan, providing an analysis of the potential risks, benefits, and costs associated with the project. Feasibility reports are often used in business, engineering, and other fields to determine the viability of a project before it is undertaken.

Field Report

A field report documents observations and findings from fieldwork, which is research conducted in the natural environment or setting. Field reports are often used in anthropology, ecology, and other social and natural sciences.

Experimental Report

An experimental report documents the results of a scientific experiment, including the hypothesis, methods, results, and conclusions. Experimental reports are often used in biology, chemistry, and other sciences to communicate the results of laboratory experiments.

Case Study Report

A case study report provides an in-depth analysis of a specific case or situation, often used in psychology, social work, and other fields to document and understand complex cases or phenomena.

Literature Review Report

A literature review report synthesizes and summarizes existing research on a specific topic, providing an overview of the current state of knowledge on the subject. Literature review reports are often used in social sciences, education, and other fields to identify gaps in the literature and guide future research.

Research Report Example

Following is a Research Report Example sample for Students:

Title: The Impact of Social Media on Academic Performance among High School Students

This study aims to investigate the relationship between social media use and academic performance among high school students. The study utilized a quantitative research design, which involved a survey questionnaire administered to a sample of 200 high school students. The findings indicate that there is a negative correlation between social media use and academic performance, suggesting that excessive social media use can lead to poor academic performance among high school students. The results of this study have important implications for educators, parents, and policymakers, as they highlight the need for strategies that can help students balance their social media use and academic responsibilities.

Introduction:

Social media has become an integral part of the lives of high school students. With the widespread use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, students can connect with friends, share photos and videos, and engage in discussions on a range of topics. While social media offers many benefits, concerns have been raised about its impact on academic performance. Many studies have found a negative correlation between social media use and academic performance among high school students (Kirschner & Karpinski, 2010; Paul, Baker, & Cochran, 2012).

Given the growing importance of social media in the lives of high school students, it is important to investigate its impact on academic performance. This study aims to address this gap by examining the relationship between social media use and academic performance among high school students.

Methodology:

The study utilized a quantitative research design, which involved a survey questionnaire administered to a sample of 200 high school students. The questionnaire was developed based on previous studies and was designed to measure the frequency and duration of social media use, as well as academic performance.

The participants were selected using a convenience sampling technique, and the survey questionnaire was distributed in the classroom during regular school hours. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and correlation analysis.

The findings indicate that the majority of high school students use social media platforms on a daily basis, with Facebook being the most popular platform. The results also show a negative correlation between social media use and academic performance, suggesting that excessive social media use can lead to poor academic performance among high school students.

Discussion:

The results of this study have important implications for educators, parents, and policymakers. The negative correlation between social media use and academic performance suggests that strategies should be put in place to help students balance their social media use and academic responsibilities. For example, educators could incorporate social media into their teaching strategies to engage students and enhance learning. Parents could limit their children’s social media use and encourage them to prioritize their academic responsibilities. Policymakers could develop guidelines and policies to regulate social media use among high school students.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, this study provides evidence of the negative impact of social media on academic performance among high school students. The findings highlight the need for strategies that can help students balance their social media use and academic responsibilities. Further research is needed to explore the specific mechanisms by which social media use affects academic performance and to develop effective strategies for addressing this issue.

Limitations:

One limitation of this study is the use of convenience sampling, which limits the generalizability of the findings to other populations. Future studies should use random sampling techniques to increase the representativeness of the sample. Another limitation is the use of self-reported measures, which may be subject to social desirability bias. Future studies could use objective measures of social media use and academic performance, such as tracking software and school records.

Implications:

The findings of this study have important implications for educators, parents, and policymakers. Educators could incorporate social media into their teaching strategies to engage students and enhance learning. For example, teachers could use social media platforms to share relevant educational resources and facilitate online discussions. Parents could limit their children’s social media use and encourage them to prioritize their academic responsibilities. They could also engage in open communication with their children to understand their social media use and its impact on their academic performance. Policymakers could develop guidelines and policies to regulate social media use among high school students. For example, schools could implement social media policies that restrict access during class time and encourage responsible use.

References:

• Kirschner, P. A., & Karpinski, A. C. (2010). Facebook® and academic performance. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(6), 1237-1245.
• Paul, J. A., Baker, H. M., & Cochran, J. D. (2012). Effect of online social networking on student academic performance. Journal of the Research Center for Educational Technology, 8(1), 1-19.
• Pantic, I. (2014). Online social networking and mental health. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 17(10), 652-657.
• Rosen, L. D., Carrier, L. M., & Cheever, N. A. (2013). Facebook and texting made me do it: Media-induced task-switching while studying. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(3), 948-958.

Note*: Above mention, Example is just a sample for the students’ guide. Do not directly copy and paste as your College or University assignment. Kindly do some research and Write your own.

Applications of Research Report

Research reports have many applications, including:

• Communicating research findings: The primary application of a research report is to communicate the results of a study to other researchers, stakeholders, or the general public. The report serves as a way to share new knowledge, insights, and discoveries with others in the field.
• Informing policy and practice : Research reports can inform policy and practice by providing evidence-based recommendations for decision-makers. For example, a research report on the effectiveness of a new drug could inform regulatory agencies in their decision-making process.
• Supporting further research: Research reports can provide a foundation for further research in a particular area. Other researchers may use the findings and methodology of a report to develop new research questions or to build on existing research.
• Evaluating programs and interventions : Research reports can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of programs and interventions in achieving their intended outcomes. For example, a research report on a new educational program could provide evidence of its impact on student performance.
• Demonstrating impact : Research reports can be used to demonstrate the impact of research funding or to evaluate the success of research projects. By presenting the findings and outcomes of a study, research reports can show the value of research to funders and stakeholders.
• Enhancing professional development : Research reports can be used to enhance professional development by providing a source of information and learning for researchers and practitioners in a particular field. For example, a research report on a new teaching methodology could provide insights and ideas for educators to incorporate into their own practice.

How to write Research Report

Here are some steps you can follow to write a research report:

• Identify the research question: The first step in writing a research report is to identify your research question. This will help you focus your research and organize your findings.
• Conduct research : Once you have identified your research question, you will need to conduct research to gather relevant data and information. This can involve conducting experiments, reviewing literature, or analyzing data.
• Organize your findings: Once you have gathered all of your data, you will need to organize your findings in a way that is clear and understandable. This can involve creating tables, graphs, or charts to illustrate your results.
• Write the report: Once you have organized your findings, you can begin writing the report. Start with an introduction that provides background information and explains the purpose of your research. Next, provide a detailed description of your research methods and findings. Finally, summarize your results and draw conclusions based on your findings.
• Proofread and edit: After you have written your report, be sure to proofread and edit it carefully. Check for grammar and spelling errors, and make sure that your report is well-organized and easy to read.
• Include a reference list: Be sure to include a list of references that you used in your research. This will give credit to your sources and allow readers to further explore the topic if they choose.
• Format your report: Finally, format your report according to the guidelines provided by your instructor or organization. This may include formatting requirements for headings, margins, fonts, and spacing.

Purpose of Research Report

The purpose of a research report is to communicate the results of a research study to a specific audience, such as peers in the same field, stakeholders, or the general public. The report provides a detailed description of the research methods, findings, and conclusions.

Some common purposes of a research report include:

• Sharing knowledge: A research report allows researchers to share their findings and knowledge with others in their field. This helps to advance the field and improve the understanding of a particular topic.
• Identifying trends: A research report can identify trends and patterns in data, which can help guide future research and inform decision-making.
• Addressing problems: A research report can provide insights into problems or issues and suggest solutions or recommendations for addressing them.
• Evaluating programs or interventions : A research report can evaluate the effectiveness of programs or interventions, which can inform decision-making about whether to continue, modify, or discontinue them.
• Meeting regulatory requirements: In some fields, research reports are required to meet regulatory requirements, such as in the case of drug trials or environmental impact studies.

When to Write Research Report

A research report should be written after completing the research study. This includes collecting data, analyzing the results, and drawing conclusions based on the findings. Once the research is complete, the report should be written in a timely manner while the information is still fresh in the researcher’s mind.

In academic settings, research reports are often required as part of coursework or as part of a thesis or dissertation. In this case, the report should be written according to the guidelines provided by the instructor or institution.

In other settings, such as in industry or government, research reports may be required to inform decision-making or to comply with regulatory requirements. In these cases, the report should be written as soon as possible after the research is completed in order to inform decision-making in a timely manner.

Overall, the timing of when to write a research report depends on the purpose of the research, the expectations of the audience, and any regulatory requirements that need to be met. However, it is important to complete the report in a timely manner while the information is still fresh in the researcher’s mind.

Characteristics of Research Report

There are several characteristics of a research report that distinguish it from other types of writing. These characteristics include:

• Objective: A research report should be written in an objective and unbiased manner. It should present the facts and findings of the research study without any personal opinions or biases.
• Systematic: A research report should be written in a systematic manner. It should follow a clear and logical structure, and the information should be presented in a way that is easy to understand and follow.
• Detailed: A research report should be detailed and comprehensive. It should provide a thorough description of the research methods, results, and conclusions.
• Accurate : A research report should be accurate and based on sound research methods. The findings and conclusions should be supported by data and evidence.
• Organized: A research report should be well-organized. It should include headings and subheadings to help the reader navigate the report and understand the main points.
• Clear and concise: A research report should be written in clear and concise language. The information should be presented in a way that is easy to understand, and unnecessary jargon should be avoided.
• Citations and references: A research report should include citations and references to support the findings and conclusions. This helps to give credit to other researchers and to provide readers with the opportunity to further explore the topic.

Advantages of Research Report

Research reports have several advantages, including:

• Communicating research findings: Research reports allow researchers to communicate their findings to a wider audience, including other researchers, stakeholders, and the general public. This helps to disseminate knowledge and advance the understanding of a particular topic.
• Providing evidence for decision-making : Research reports can provide evidence to inform decision-making, such as in the case of policy-making, program planning, or product development. The findings and conclusions can help guide decisions and improve outcomes.
• Supporting further research: Research reports can provide a foundation for further research on a particular topic. Other researchers can build on the findings and conclusions of the report, which can lead to further discoveries and advancements in the field.
• Demonstrating expertise: Research reports can demonstrate the expertise of the researchers and their ability to conduct rigorous and high-quality research. This can be important for securing funding, promotions, and other professional opportunities.
• Meeting regulatory requirements: In some fields, research reports are required to meet regulatory requirements, such as in the case of drug trials or environmental impact studies. Producing a high-quality research report can help ensure compliance with these requirements.

Limitations of Research Report

Despite their advantages, research reports also have some limitations, including:

• Time-consuming: Conducting research and writing a report can be a time-consuming process, particularly for large-scale studies. This can limit the frequency and speed of producing research reports.
• Expensive: Conducting research and producing a report can be expensive, particularly for studies that require specialized equipment, personnel, or data. This can limit the scope and feasibility of some research studies.
• Limited generalizability: Research studies often focus on a specific population or context, which can limit the generalizability of the findings to other populations or contexts.
• Potential bias : Researchers may have biases or conflicts of interest that can influence the findings and conclusions of the research study. Additionally, participants may also have biases or may not be representative of the larger population, which can limit the validity and reliability of the findings.
• Accessibility: Research reports may be written in technical or academic language, which can limit their accessibility to a wider audience. Additionally, some research may be behind paywalls or require specialized access, which can limit the ability of others to read and use the findings.

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Research Design in Business and Management pp 53–84 Cite as

Writing up a Research Report

• Stefan Hunziker 3 &
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• First Online: 04 January 2024

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A research report is one big argument about how and why you came up with your conclusions. To make it a convincing argument, a typical guiding structure has developed. In the different chapters, there are distinct issues that need to be addressed to explain to the reader why your conclusions are valid. The governing principle for writing the report is full disclosure: to explain everything and ensure replicability by another researcher.

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Barros, L. O. (2016). The only academic phrasebook you’ll ever need . Createspace Independent Publishing Platform.

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Pearl, J., & Mackenzie, D. (2018). The book of why: The new science of cause and effect. Basic Books.

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Silicon Valley is pricing academics out of AI research

With eye-popping salaries and access to costly computing power, ai companies are draining academia of talent.

Fei-Fei Li, the “godmother of artificial intelligence,” delivered an urgent plea to President Biden in the glittering ballroom of San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel in June.

The Stanford professor asked Biden to fund a national warehouse of computing power and data sets — part of a “moonshot investment” allowing the country’s top AI researchers to keep up with tech giants.

She elevated the ask Thursday at Biden’s State of the Union address, which Li attended as a guest of Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.) to promote a bill to fund a national AI repository.

Li is at the forefront of a growing chorus of academics, policymakers and former employees who argue that the sky-high cost of working with AI models is boxing researchers out of the field, compromising independent study of the burgeoning technology.

As such tech behemoths as Meta, Google and Microsoft funnel billions of dollars into AI, a massive resources gap is building with even the country’s richest universities. Meta aims to procure 350,000 of the specialized computer chips — called GPUs — that are essential to run the gargantuan calculations needed for AI models. In contrast, Stanford’s Natural Language Processing Group has 68 GPUs for all of its work.

After attending State of the Union speech #SOTU tonight, I had a brief exchange w/ President Biden @POTUS . Me: “Mr. President, you gave a historical speech by mentioning AI in the SOTU speech for the first time in history.” @POTUS (smiling): “Yes! And keep it safe”. 1/ pic.twitter.com/cJ7vs440fx — Fei-Fei Li (@drfeifei) March 8, 2024

To obtain the expensive computing power and data required to research AI systems, scholars frequently partner with tech employees. Meanwhile, tech firms’ eye-popping salaries are draining academia of star talent.

Big tech companies now dominate breakthroughs in the field. In 2022, the tech industry created 32 significant machine learning models, while academics produced three, a significant reversal from 2014, when the majority of AI breakthroughs originated in universities, according to a Stanford report .

Researchers say this lopsided power dynamic is shaping the field in subtle ways, pushing AI scholars to tailor their research for commercial use. Last month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company’s independent AI research lab would move closer to its product team, ensuring “some level of alignment” between the groups, he said.

“The public sector is now significantly lagging in resources and talent compared to that of industry,” said Li, a former Google employee and the co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. “This will have profound consequences because industry is focused on developing technology that is profit-driven, whereas public-sector AI goals are focused on creating public goods.”

This agency is tasked with keeping AI safe. Its offices are crumbling.

Some are pushing for new sources of funding. Li has been making the rounds in Washington, huddling with White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar, dining with the political press at a swanky seafood and steak restaurant and visiting Capitol Hill for meetings with lawmakers working on AI, including Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.).

Large tech companies have contributed computing resources to the National AI Research Resource, the national warehouse project, including a $20 million donation in computing credits from Microsoft.

“We have long embraced the importance of sharing knowledge and compute resources with our colleagues within academia,” Microsoft Chief Scientific Officer Eric Horvitz said in a statement.

Policymakers are taking some steps to address the funding gaps. Last year, the National Science Foundation announced a $140 million investment to launch seven university-led National AI Research Institutes to examine how AI could mitigate the effects of climate change and improve education, among other topics.

Eshoo said she hopes to pass the Create AI Act, which has bipartisan backing in the House and the Senate, by the end of the year, when she is scheduled to retire. The legislation “essentially democratizes AI,” Eshoo said.

But scholars say this infusion may not come quickly enough.

As Silicon Valley races to build chatbots and image generators, it is drawing would-be computer science professors with high salaries and the chance to work on interesting AI problems. Nearly 70 percent of people with PhDs in AI end up in private industry compared with 21 percent of graduates two decades ago, according to a 2023 report .

Amid explosive demand, America is running out of power

Big Tech’s AI boom has pushed the salaries for the best researchers to new heights. Median compensation packages for AI research scientists at Meta climbed from $256,000 in 2020 to $335,250 in 2023, according to Levels.fyi , a salary-tracking website. True stars can attract even more cash: AI engineers with a PhD and several years of experience building AI models can command compensation as high as $20 million over four years, said Ali Ghodsi, who as CEO of AI start-up Databricks is regularly competing to hire AI talent.

“The compensation is through the roof. It’s ridiculous,” he said. “It’s not an uncommon number to hear, roughly.”

University academics often have little choice but to work with industry researchers , with the companies footing the bill for computing power and offering data. Nearly 40 percent of papers presented at leading AI conferences in 2020 had at least one tech employee author, according to the 2023 report . And industry grants often fund PhD students to perform research, said Mohamed Abdalla, a scientist at the Canada-based Institute for Better Health at Trillium Health Partners and incoming assistant professor at the University of Alberta, who has conducted research on the effect of industry on academics’ AI research.

“It was like a running joke that, like, everyone is getting hired by them,” Abdalla said. “And the people that were remaining, they were funded by them — so, in a way, hired by them.”

Google believes private companies and universities should work together to develop the science behind AI, said Jane Park, a spokesperson for the company. Google still routinely publishes its research publicly to benefit the broader AI community, Park said.

David Harris, a former research manager for Meta’s responsible AI team, said corporate labs may not censor the outcome of research but may influence which projects get tackled.

“Anytime you see a mix of authors who are employed by a company and authors who work at a university, you should really scrutinize the motives of the company for contributing to that work,” said Harris, who is now a chancellor’s public scholar at the University of California at Berkeley. “We used to look at people employed in academia to be neutral scholars, motivated only by the pursuit of truth and the interest of society.”

These fake images reveal how AI amplifies our worst stereotypes

Tech giants procure huge amounts of computing power through data centers and have access to GPUs. These resources are expensive: A recent report from Stanford University researchers estimated that Google DeepMind’s large language model, Chinchilla, cost $2.1 million to develop. More than 100 top artificial intelligence researchers on Tuesday urged generative AI companies to offer a legal and technical safe harbor to researchers so they can scrutinize their products without the fear that internet platforms will suspend their accounts or threaten legal action.

The necessity for advanced computing power is likely to only grow as AI scientists crunch more data to improve the performance of their models, said Neil Thompson, director of the FutureTech research project at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, which studies progress in computing.

“To keep getting better, [what] you expect to need is more and more money, more and more computers, more and more data,” Thompson said. “What that’s going to mean is that people who do not have as much compute [and] who do not have as many resources are going to stop being able to participate.”

Tech companies, including Meta and Google, have historically run their AI research labs to resemble universities where scientists decide what projects to pursue to advance the state of research, according to people familiar with the subject who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private company matters.

Those workers were largely isolated from teams focused on building products or generating revenue, the people said. They were judged on influential papers they published or notable breakthroughs — similar to metrics used for their university peers, the people said. Top AI Meta scientists Yann LeCun and Joelle Pineau hold dual appointments at New York University and McGill University, blurring the lines between industry and academia.

Top AI researchers say OpenAI, Meta and more hinder independent evaluations

In an increasingly competitive market for generative AI products , research freedom inside companies could wane. In April, Google announced it was merging two of its AI research groups — DeepMind, which it acquired in 2014, and the Brain team from Google Research — into one department called Google DeepMind. Last year, Google started to take more advantage of its own AI discoveries, sharing research papers only after the lab work had been turned into products, The Washington Post has reported .

Meta has also reshuffled its research teams. The company placed its Fundamental AI Research team, known as FAIR, under the helm of its virtual-reality division, Reality Labs, in 2022 and last year reassigned some of the group’s researchers to a new generative AI product team. Last month, Zuckerberg told investors that FAIR would work “closer together” with the generative AI product team, arguing that while the two groups would still conduct research on “different time horizons,” it was helpful to the company “to have some level of alignment” between them.

“In a lot of tech companies right now, they hired research scientists that knew something about AI and maybe set certain expectations about how much freedom they would have to set their own schedule and set their own research agenda,” Harris said. “That’s changing, especially for the companies that are moving frantically right now to ship these products.”

A previous version of this article incorrectly said that Google acquired DeepMind in 2010. Google acquired the AI start-up in 2014. The article has been corrected.

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Biden Suggests a Bigger Federal Role to Reduce Housing Costs

A new report focuses on the prolonged struggle to build affordable housing across America and suggests federal incentives to help.

• Share full article

By Jim Tankersley and Conor Dougherty

Jim Tankersley covers White House economic policy. Conor Dougherty has covered housing policy for more than a decade.

Economists in the Biden administration are calling for more aggressive federal action to drive down costs for home buyers and renters, taking aim at one of the biggest economic challenges facing President Biden as he runs for re-election.

The policy proposals in a White House report being released on Thursday include what could be an aggressive federal intervention in local politics, which often dictates where homes are built and who can occupy them. The administration is backing a plan to pressure cities and other localities to relax zoning restrictions that in many cases hinder affordable housing construction.

That recommendation is part of a new administration deep dive into a housing crisis, decades in the making, that is hindering the president’s chances for a second term. The proposals, included in the annual Economic Report of the President, could serve as a blueprint for a major housing push if Mr. Biden wins a second term.

The report includes a suite of moves meant to reduce the cost of renting or buying a home, while encouraging local governments to change zoning laws to allow development of more affordable housing.

“It’s really hard to make a difference in this space, in this affordable housing space, without tackling land use regulations,” Jared Bernstein, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview.

Mr. Bernstein added that administration officials believed many local leaders were encouraging a bigger federal role in zoning reform — which can help override objections from local groups that oppose development. “I feel like we’re kicking through more of an open door now than we ever have before,” he said.

The report is full of statistics illustrating why housing has become an acute source of stress for American families and an electoral liability for Mr. Biden.

The administration has acknowledged that it has limited power over local zoning rules, which tend to dictate the design and density of homes in particular neighborhoods. Most of the president’s recommendations for expanding supply involve using the federal budget as a carrot to encourage local governments to allow more building — including adding low-income housing and smaller starter homes.

Such policies are unlikely to be put into law this year, with an election ahead and Republicans in control of the House.

But the focus on housing, and the endorsement of a comprehensive set of policies to increase its supply and affordability, could serve as a blueprint for a potentially bipartisan effort on the issue if Mr. Biden wins re-election. It could also add momentum to a housing reform movement that is well underway in state legislatures around the country.

The report documents how, over the past decade, home prices have significantly outpaced wage growth for American families. That has pushed ownership out of reach for middle-income home shoppers and left lower-income renters on the brink of poverty.

A quarter of tenants — about 12 million households — now spend more than half their income on rent. Prices are so high that if a minimum-wage employee worked 45 hours a week for a month, a median rent would consume every dollar he or she made.

Behind all this, the report said, is a longstanding housing shortage. The lack of housing has become a rare point of agreement among Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

The shortage is the product of decades of failing to build enough homes, a trend that worsened after the 2008 financial crisis. It has been exacerbated by the rising cost of construction along with the many local zoning and land use rules that make housing harder and more expensive to build. These rules also limit what kinds of units can go where, for instance by making it illegal to build apartments in single-family neighborhoods.

The lack of affordable housing particularly hurts lower-income families and couples starting out. Millions of lower-cost apartments have essentially disappeared over the past decade, either through rising rents or by falling into disrepair. At the same time, smaller and lower-cost “ starter homes ” are a shrinking share of the market.

Over the past several years, a bipartisan group of legislators in both red and blue states have pushed dozens of state laws to limit cities’ control over development. The report cheered them and noted the administration’s efforts to encourage such reforms, including the Housing Supply Action Plan , which was released two years ago.

Mr. Biden has focused heavily on housing in recent weeks, in part to show voters he is fighting to lower one of their major monthly costs. Privately, his aides have expressed hope that Federal Reserve interest rate cuts this year will drive down mortgage rates and possibly home prices, if a new supply of homes hits the market in response.

Publicly, Mr. Biden has seized on the initiative, calling on lawmakers to pass big federal investments in housing supply and tax credits for people buying homes.

“If inflation keeps coming down — and it’s predicted to do that — mortgage rates are going to come down as well, but I’m not going to wait,” Mr. Biden said on Tuesday in Las Vegas. “I’m not going to wait.”

Jim Tankersley writes about economic policy at the White House and how it affects the country and the world. He has covered the topic for more than a dozen years in Washington, with a focus on the middle class. More about Jim Tankersley

Conor Dougherty covers housing and development, focusing on the rising costs of homeownership. He is based in Los Angeles. More about Conor Dougherty

AI could lead to human extinction, says report commissioned by US State Department

• The US State Department commissioned a risk assessment that found AI could lead to human extinction.
• Some of the risks include the development of bioweapons, cyber-attacks, and autonomous robots.
• The report recommended regulating the AI race and establishing an AI safety task force.

AI may take your job in the somewhat near future — and it may eventually take human life, according to a new report commissioned by the US Department of State.

The State Department commissioned AI startup Gladstone to conduct an AI risk assessment in October 2022, about a month before ChatGPT came out.

The goal of the report was to examine the risk of AI weaponization and loss of control. The corresponding action plan is intended to increase the safety and security of advanced AI, according to an executive summary of the report.

The 284-page report came out on Monday and it detailed some of the "catastrophic risks" associated with artificial general intelligence, a yet-to-be-achieved level of AI which Gladstone defined as a system that can "outperform humans across a broad range of economic and strategic domains."

Some of the risks could "lead to human extinction," the report said. An online version includes a shorter summary of the findings.

"The development of AGI, and of AI capabilities approaching AGI, would introduce catastrophic risks unlike any the United States has ever faced," the report stated.

Gladstone said it incorporated surveys with 200 stakeholders in the industry and workers from the top AI developers, like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, and Meta . It also conducted a historical analysis of comparable technological developments, like the arms race to a nuclear weapon, which factored into its report.

The report concluded that AI posed a high risk of weaponization, which could be in the form of biowarfare, mass cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns, or autonomous robots. Gladstone CEO Jeremie Harris told BI he personally considered cyber attacks the highest risk , while CTO Edouard Harris said election interference was his biggest concern.

The report also indicated a high risk of loss of control. If this were to happen, it could lead to "mass-casualty events" or "global destabilization," the report said.

"Publicly and privately, researchers at frontier AI labs have voiced concerns that AI systems developed in the next 12 to 36 months may be capable of executing catastrophic malware attacks, assisting in bioweapon design, and directing swarms of goal-directed human-like autonomous agents," the report said.

AI experts weigh in on the report's findings

Robert Ghrist, the associate dean of undergraduate education at Penn Engineering, agreed that AI could develop at the rate the report suggests. But he didn't feel as concerned about the worst possible scenario happening.

As a video game enthusiast, Ghrist said he remembers when the government was panicked about the PlayStation 2 . People considered it a supercomputer at the time and wanted to impose export controls. In hindsight, he said, this sounds like an extreme overreaction.

"There are absolutely legitimate concerns associated with the adoption of any new power," Ghrist said. "And we have to think through all the different things that could go wrong. We also need to spend an equal amount of time and energy thinking about all the things that could go right."

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The idea that AI could one day lead to human extinction isn't novel, and the report cited instances where experts in the industry have shared concerns over the years.

Geoff Hinton , a renowned expert in deep learning, left Google in 2023 to speak freely about AI. He believes there's a 10% chance AI will lead to total human extinction within the next 30 years. Various other figures, including FTC chair Lina Khan and early OpenAI cofounder Elon Musk , stated similar beliefs that AI will lead to an existential threat. But there are also AI experts who feel that concern is overblown.

Lorenzo Thione, an AI investor and managing director at Gaingels, a venture investment group, told BI that he disagrees with the "alarmist" logic in the report.

He said the progression between OpenAI's GPT3 and GPT4 doesn't necessarily mean that computational power will get four times more powerful every year. Thione said limiting research and advancement in the way the action plan suggested would be both "ineffective" and result in "stifling innovation."

However, Artur Kiulian, an AI analyst and founder of nonprofit research lab PolyAgent, said that he found the report's concerns valid.

"Oh it's absolutely real and I think there's a conversation to have in terms of practical human extinction," Kiulian said.

Gladstone's action plan recommended that the government create regulations to help slow down the AI race and establish an AI safety task force to improve its own AI capabilities.

While Kiulian believes in the need for regulation, he thinks it should be done in a way that encourages innovation. Creating a task force would be too expensive and the government's timeline won't work with how fast AI is moving, he said.

He also said the report's suggestion to create international safeguards and control the supply chain isn't likely to be effective. Kiulian said that other countries that don't care about regulation will continue to advance AI and build solutions.

"Try telling Iran that they can't use computer vision models and their drones," Kiulian said. "I mean, good luck with that."

He said the government would be better off providing companies with the infrastructure and resources to test AI.

David Krueger, an AI researcher at Cambridge University, said he largely agrees with Gladstone's recommendations. He said it's necessary to be proactive, rather than reactive, when addressing catastrophic risks.

" But I think it doesn't go far enough," Krueger said. "Even if they were all adopted, we would still face an unacceptable level of catastrophic risk from AI."

Krueger also said that instead of the US regulating international use of AI as the report suggested, the global community needs to be involved from the beginning.

The US Department of State did not respond to requests for comment.

Additional reporting by Aaron Mok.

Watch: Despite what’s going on in Westworld, Neil deGrasse Tyson says we shouldn’t worry about killer robots

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Blommer Chocolate to close Chicago factory

Blommer will move its headquarters and a research and development center to the merchandise mart..

Blommer Chocolate Co. factory at 600 W. Kinzie St. will be closing at the end of May. It opened in 1939 when the company was founded.

Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times

Blommer Chocolate Co. will close its factory in the heart of Chicago at the end of May due to increasing costs of running the aging facility at 600 W. Kinzie St., the company announced on Friday.

It will cut 250 jobs, according to a spokesperson.

“The location and age of the Chicago facility coupled with increasing repair and maintenance of the building and equipment has elevated operating costs and created production reliability issues,” Blommer said in a statement.

Employees learned of the closure Friday afternoon. Several people were seen walking out of the factory carrying pieces of paper with information about next steps.

Some employees will move to other roles within the company, others to competing confectioneries who have agreed to take them on.

“They’ve been working very hard to keep this plant operational for many years. They know the struggles that it’s taken to run something of this vintage,” Robert Karr, senior vice president of Blommer, said. “They’ve taken the news as we have — very hard — in the sense that we’ve all been so committed. And while we don't want this day to come, it’s a sad day, but it’s also a part of the future.”

The factory known for wafting mouth-watering chocolate aromas across downtown Chicago opened in 1939 when the company was founded. The site is also the original manufacturing plant.

Karr said while the loss of the chocolate smell will leave a void downtown, the company is looking forward to the future.

“This is where our headquarters is located so we’re not leaving Chicago,” he said. “We have people when we walk around the neighborhood from all over the world wondering where the chocolate is and we’re all going to miss it. It’s a big part of Chicago.”

‘Missed for sure’

Blommer’s corporate headquarters and lab will remain at the Merchandise Mart. The company said its new research and development center will open at the Mart in fall 2024 and will focus on processing and ingredient research, “concept tasting” and more.

Over the next several years, Blommer will invest $100 million in its remaining production facilities in East Greenville, Pennsylvania; Union City, California; and Campbellford, Ontario in Canada.

Fulton River District residents were shocked at hearing about the closing. Many said the smells from the neighboring factory were a part of their daily routines.

“I guess it’s not going to smell as good around here anymore, unfortunately,” Tom Favero, 26, said. "It’ll be missed for sure.”

Christy Kelly, 36, and Matt Kelly, 38, got used to smelling chocolate and can’t imagine it being gone.

“We call it ‘the terrible factory smell’ ironically because we love it,” Matt Kelly. “We sit on the balcony of our place in the summer and when the wind carries the smell over it’s like the best place on earth.”

“It’s such a bummer," Christy Kelly said. "We’ll have to melt our own chocolate on our stove now.”

Karr, of Blommer, said the factory produced over 200 million pounds of chocolate a year. It officially ceased production Friday, and the equipment will be moved to other facilities.

Overall, according to the company, Blommer employs about 900 people and is the largest cocoa processor and ingredient chocolate supplier in North America.

Candymaking history

Henry Blommer Sr. and his brothers Al and Bernard founded Bloomer in 1939. Their grandfather, Conrad Blommer, a Milwaukee confectioner, opened Blommer Ice Cream, which became Wisconsin Creameries, according to Blommer’s website.

In 2018, Japanese company Fuji Oil Holdings Inc. announced it would purchase Blommer for about $750 million. Then in 2020, the chocolate maker shuttered its store inside the factory to allow expansion of the 270,000-square-foot facility.

• Blommer Chocolate Co. shutting down store to expand factory

The company has faced its share of setbacks in Chicago. In 2005, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cited Blommer for alleged clean air violations after a citizen complained about odor and emissions. An EPA inspector observed dust from Blommer's grinders “that exceeded limits” for the amount of light obscured by emissions. And the facility has survived a number of fires , most recently in 2020.

But its financial hurdles appeared to have drawn concern from Fuji Oil in January, when it cut its fiscal year net profit forecast, citing high costs at Blommer, according to MarketWatch.

In an investor presentation released Friday, Fuji Oil said the chocolate maker's profitability "deteriorated significantly due to changes in the U.S. labor market, a sharp rise in interest rates, and a sharp increase in manufacturing costs caused by skyrocketing cocoa prices." It also noted "extraordinary losses" of more than $60 million for the third quarter of fiscal year 2023.

The shuttering of Blommer’s factory closes another chapter in Chicago’s candymaking history, dating from the late 1800s. Tootsie Rolls, Brach’s, Frango, Wrigley Gum, Fannie May, and Mars Candy all have roots in the city . Fannie May’s first store was in the Loop and Frango mints were produced at Marshall Field's department store on State Street for 70 years.

Entrance of Blommer Chocolate Co.'s Chicago factory on Friday, March 22.

• STEINBERG: Chicago’s candy crown slips with Mars exit