Secondary research companies give you an instant path to insights, offering a shortcut to understanding your customer journey. Rather than set up and conduct resource-intensive studies on your own, these companies pull data from multiple sources to help inform your next best actions.
Also known as desk research companies, secondary research companies help you preserve your time and resources when launching new marketing initiatives. They explore online databases, social media, libraries, industry experts, market research studies, and many other places on your behalf, all with your goals in mind.
Desk research is a fraction of the cost of primary research and can save you time and effort compared with traditional methods. Let’s explore the top secondary market research companies to help you capitalize on readily available data.
What are the Top Secondary Research Companies?
We chose these top secondary research companies based on their focus on desk research and complementary research, approaches, and reputation. Here are the best secondary research companies to start your journey:
Meltwater
B2B International
myMRPlace
Geo Strategy Partners
Markelytics Solutions
Kantar Marketplace
Thrive Analytics
Ascendant Consulting Firm
SIS International Research
Meltwater
Meltwater’s AI-enabled Consumer Intelligence solution is one of the most powerful of its kind, offering insights into brands, consumers, and the media landscape. It puts the power of desk research into your hands, allowing you to command new insights as needed.
What makes Meltwater’s technology stand out is its ability to answer questions you have yet to ask. Using AI, market research expertise, and data science, our platform helps you track topics and trending content, understand audiences, identify new segments and markets, and meet your customers where they are — and you don’t have to know where to start in order to gain these insights. Meltwater recognizes sentiments and how people are discussing various topics, opening the door to new insights and ideas you haven’t yet thought to explore.
With billions of data points updated in real time, users can monitor trends or conduct new desk research whenever they need it. Multiple users can research, collaborate, and share reports of their findings—all from one platform.
B2B International
Specializing in B2B market research, B2B International offers desk research as part of its market research services. They conduct research regarding brand and communications, customer segments, markets, product positioning, and thought leadership to help brands cut through the noise and get in front of their target audiences.
Their secondary research service hinges on quality internet research. They use a combination of libraries, databases, online directories, and similar sources. They’re constantly expanding their resource pool and often combine secondary research with primary research like interviews and surveys to build a comprehensive study.
myMRPlace
myMRPlace is unique in that it serves as a marketplace for secondary market research companies. It matches you based on the type of desk research you need, allowing you to connect with only the companies that can help you.
These companies use a variety of desk research techniques and aren’t limited to basic Google and Bing searches. Industry reports, books, white papers, reviews, articles, and enterprise data sources may contribute to the process.
This marketplace approach removes some of the risks associated with buying secondary research. You don’t know what data is available until you look for it, so working with a secondary research company comes with some risk. If there’s little or no data available on the topic you need, you could waste precious resources and have your questions go unanswered.
myMRPlace focuses on helping you find the right data supplier for the job. You can share your project requirements, which go to more than 800 companies in 90 countries. Companies will provide you with a quote before you begin, allowing you more control over your project and budget.
Geo Strategy Partners
Geo Strategy Partners is a full-service market research company specializing in industrial and technology companies. Desk research is an integral part of market research because it serves as a starting point for important questions, competitive analyses, and insights to guide a winning strategy.
The firm relies on a combination of qualitative and quantitative research techniques and tools. Projects typically include analyzing market trends, identifying competitors, characterizing the type and size of new opportunities, and predicting market trends, among other things. With these findings, customers can answer key questions about new products to develop, new territories to enter, and how to create go-to-market strategies.
Markelytics Solutions
Markelytics harnesses the power of technology to deliver insights in rapidly evolving industries. Specializing in research for companies in automotive, e-commerce, education, financial services, fashion, healthcare, and others, the firm collects digital research from all corners of the world to fuel business strategies.
Speed is the name of the game, with technology helping to remove redundant processes and deliver quick insights. The company leans heavily on resources that are available digitally, helping to bring context and action to their findings so businesses can make informed decisions.
Tip: Learn how to increase your organization's speed to insight in our Insight-Driven Marketing Guide.
Kantar Marketplace
Based in the UK, Kantar Marketplace puts the power of automation in your desk research processes. This automated platform combines human expertise with technology to help you learn more about markets and the people driving them. The platform not only offers secondary data but also transforms the data into easy-to-understand visuals for faster decision-making.
Kantar also gives you the option to pay as you go (so you only pay for what you need) or choose a paid subscription for ongoing insights.
Thrive Analytics
From market and customer research to advisory services, Thrive Analytics offers 360 degrees of marketing insights. With a combination of traditional and innovative methodologies, the firm specializes in digital marketing aspects to create robust strategies.
Like many secondary research companies, Thrive Analytics uses a combination of primary and secondary data to create a complete picture. Data analysis is among their core specialties, helping you to make sense of the research and numbers so you’ll know what to do next.
Ascendant Consulting Firm
Ascendant Consulting Firm helps you harness readily available insights into consumers, competitors, and markets. The team deploys a variety of market research strategies, including secondary research, to help companies make key decisions for long-term business health.
With nearly 100 combined years of experience in qualitative and quantitative research, the firm uses popular approaches like regression analyses and projective techniques to think like a customer (or competitor).
Read more about how Pernod Ricard and Haleon use Meltwater to transform their market research processes.
SIS International Research
SIS International Research is a full-service market research and intelligence firm offering primary and secondary research services. They work with B2B and B2C companies across multiple markets, including healthcare, food and beverage, FinTech, and industrial clients.
Secondary or desktop research is one of the firm’s many offerings, often complemented by primary research, competitive intelligence, product development, and brand positioning. They offer global coverage to give companies both broad and granular insights into people, products, and places. With experience spanning nearly 40 years, the high volume of primary research they produce shows promise for companies seeking reliable secondary sources.
Choosing the Right Desk Research Company
Empowering your research with secondary data means choosing the right companies and sources from the start. It’s important to remember that secondary research is limited, so we suggest choosing companies that:
- Have access to data related to your topic or needs
- Can pull data from a variety of sources
- Have expertise in your field or industry
- Demonstrates a track record of quality data and reports
- Maintains clear, open communication to ensure you receive the best results
The more variety in sources you have, the better chance you have of finding relevant data to address your questions. That’s what makes Meltwater’s Consumer Intelligence suite so powerful—it captures billions of data points in real time across social media, news websites, podcasts, and offline channels to help you gain a comprehensive understanding so you can move forward with confidence.
Learn how Meltwater can help your secondary market research when you request a demo by filling out the form below.
