Who are the most prominent market researchers internationally?
At Empirica we made our own ranking as of January 2018. This ranking is based on Twitter, the social network on which centers a very important part of the conversation about new tendencies and most discussions within this sector.
Twitter conversation map of the territory #mrx. January 2018. Gephi.
If you are into market research, you may want to follow these profiles:
- Ray Poynter (@raypoynter), Nottingham. CEO of The Future Place, Founder #NewMR, author of The Handbook of Mobile Market Research & The Handbook of Online & Social Media
- Annie Pettit (@lovestats), Canadá. PhD (IO Psych) FMRIA | #Surveys #Panel #DataQuality #MRX | Writer Instructor Speaker Consultant | Canadian Chair ISO/TC225 | Dessert Ukulele
- Kristin Luck (@kristinluck), Oregon. Serial entrepreneur turned biz advisor & growth strategist. Marketing measurement/data monetization ninja. Rabid Oregonian. Passion project: @womeninresearch
- Leonard Murphy (@lennyism), Atlanta. Thinker, Doer, Leader, Advisor, Investor. Insight innovation junkie. Dad to 5 and proud uber-geek.
- Melanie Courtright (@melcourtright), Seer. Doer. Changer. Leader. Challenger. Participant advocate. Always content personally. Rarely content professionally. Happy. Having a blast. Research Now.
- Betty Adamou, (@bettyadamou), Ipswich. Design, write & lecture on Games for engagement, research data & insight. Founder @RTG_Ltd “1/7 women shaping the future of research” Inventor of ResearchGames™
- Jack (@research_runner), London. Mostly found in the worlds of marketing and endurance sports, with a dabbling of Tintin. Guest Editor at Research World Connect.
- Jake Pryszlak (@jake_pryszlak), United Kingdom. Blogger | research | Insight | SRE:@SMSInc_UK #MRX #NewMR #CX#UX
- Urpi Torrado (@urpith), Perú. Datum.
- Tom HC Anderson (@tomhcanderson), CEO OdinText
How did we do it?
We started with the assumption that the number of followers is only a proxy of a profile’s capability of generating conversations. But it only refers to a potential capability, while the real interest should focus on ‘real engagement’. For this reason, we decided to analyse spontaneous conversations on Twitter directly.
The first step consisted of establishing the boudaries of ‘market research’, by means of a number of multi-language keywords and Boolean operators (easily identifiable given the frequent use of hashtags by these professionals). Thereby we could filter only comments truly related to market research.
In the second step we applied a network analysis. Here we analysed how the network interactions take place. We could detect:
- how profiles ‘talk’ to each other (if A mentions B in a tweet, we drew an unidirectional arrow which connects A to B)
- how they group in communities with a plurality of interests
- how information is ditributed (communities with only a few leaders vs. communities in which all users have similar influence)
- the most important element for the ranking: who are the users within the #mrx community most mentioned by other twitters
This is how we got to our international Top 10 of market researchers: the most referenced by other professionals, by publications, associations, companies… which we recommend to follow on Twitter.
Some aspects worth pointing out of the Empirica January 2018 Ranking of the most influential market researchers in the #mrx community:
- 3 discussion communities: all 10 influencers belong to three communities centred on the future of market research and the new challenges ahead
- The most important community in terms of volume of conversation centers around NewMR – GreenBook, followed by the ESOMAR community and the American Insights Association.
- Gender equality: 5 out of 10 top influencers are women
- Is the Anglosaxon world king? 9 out of 10 top influencers are anglosaxon. Although we can find excellent market researchers in Spanish speaking countries, they are not to be found in the Top 10. Perhaps they (we) should power up they Twitter conversation.
In the next few posts we are going to continue dissecting the market research conversation on Twitter. Listening to the social networks.
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