Welcome back – make yourself comfortable and stay awhile!
When we first started in the market research business we viewed ourselves primarily as a publisher of market research. We developed our off-the-shelf reports largely from quantitative surveys of scientific customers rather than from secondary sources as others were doing. Twenty years ago we were using postal mail surveys (remember those?). When we moved our business online in 1997 with the launch of The Science Advisory Board we vastly increased the speed with which we could collect data and the pace at which we published new titles reached the point where we were releasing a new report every three weeks.
One of the unexpected effects of our publishing was that it increased demand for our custom research services. Off-the-shelf reports simply can’t anticipate everything that their readers will want to know about a given market. At first much of our custom research was in the form of a simple survey to answer a few questions resulting from a client who had read one of our reports. Success breeds success and before we knew it we were taking on engagements of strategic importance – conducting multi-modal research on a global basis in support of major acquisitions, market entry decisions and the launch of hundreds of new products in the life science market.
The demand for our custom research services pulled us away from our publisher roots. This year we’re beginning to return to them. We’re not in any way leaving the custom research and advisory business – in fact, this year is already our busiest ever and we expect that to continue.
At the same time, we’re observing a trend in how our many clients consume market research. That trend can be summed up, as “I need a number. And I need it now!”
From the boardroom to the rep in the field, our clients want hyper-specific data to answer important questions on the spot. “How big is the market for Real-Time PCR?” “What plate format is most commonly used by scientists performing cell-based assays?” “How satisfied are my stem cell customers compared to my nearest competitor?” “What percent of scientists are going to start using CRISPR in the next 12 months?”
To meet this demand we’ve launched three new reports on our innovative Interactive Market Intelligence platform, with another coming next month. We’re producing hard data on mature and emerging life science markets and making it available to our clients anywhere at any time. It’s there when they need it and it will refreshed in six months.
So please enjoy browsing our catalog where our traditional PDF reports have been marked down to signal the end of one era of publishing market research, and we hope you’ll join us in the exciting times ahead.