How to Read the $150B Insights Industry Without Getting Fooled

How do I size the global insights industry and decide where to play? That's the exact question we hear from strategy leads every quarter. The honest answer: don't just look at the headline number. The global insights industry surpassed US$150 billion in 2024 and was projected to pass US$160 billion by the end of 2025 (ESOMAR via Research World). But that top line hides three very different businesses with three very different growth rates. If you treat them as one, you'll misallocate capital.

Imagine you run strategy at a mid-sized insights firm

Picture this: you're the head of strategy at a 200-person insights firm doing about $40 million in revenue. Your CEO wants a growth plan. Your board wants a market map. You have three weeks. Here's how we'd actually walk through it.

First, we'd define the market properly. Analysts define the industry, survey total sales and growth, and distinguish the total market from the strategically relevant market (SRM) (CFA Institute). That SRM step is where most firms go wrong. The total insights industry is $150 billion plus, but your SRM is much narrower. If you sell full-service custom research to consumer non-durables clients, your SRM is a slice of the $56 billion market research sector, not the whole $150 billion. In 2024, that market research sector was about US$56 billion, while research software was about US$62 billion and reporting about US$35 billion (ESOMAR via Research World).

So your first move: stop comparing yourself to the $150 billion number. Compare yourself to the $56 billion sector — and then to the even smaller slice you actually compete in.

Growth rates are not created equal

Here's the part that should change your strategy. In 2024, the research software sector grew about 11.5%, the reporting sector about 8%, and the mature market research sector just 4.8% (ESOMAR via Research World). That gap is the story. The software layer is growing more than twice as fast as the traditional services layer.

If you're a services-heavy firm, you're in the slow lane. That doesn't mean panic. It means you need a deliberate answer to the software question. Do you build, buy, or partner? The data says the market is voting with its wallet: software is where the incremental dollars are going.

We'd also check the geographic mix. Asia Pacific was the fastest-growing insights region globally in 2023, growing about 9.5% compared to 8.0% globally (ESOMAR via Research World). Within Asia Pacific, Kazakhstan grew almost 24%, Vietnam 17.2%, and India 14.8% (ESOMAR via Research World). If your growth plan has no APAC component, you're ignoring the fastest-growing region.

Use Porter to see who's taking the profit

Market size and growth tell you whether the pie is expanding. Porter's Five Forces tell you who gets to eat it. The stronger the five forces, the lower the industry's profit potential (CFA Institute). In insights, buyer power is the force to watch. Buyers are strongest when they face few switching costs and can play vendors against one another (HBR article (Porter 2008)). That's exactly the dynamic in custom research: clients run competitive pitches, rotate agencies, and treat many projects as interchangeable.

Supplier power matters too, but differently than it did a decade ago. The scarce suppliers now are data sources, panel providers, and software platforms. When there's no good alternative and switching costs are high, suppliers capture value (HBR article (Porter 2008)). That's the trap for services firms: you become a reseller of someone else's software and data, and the margin leaks upstream.

Rivalry is brutal because the market research sector is mature and fragmented. Price competition is especially destructive because it transfers profits directly from the industry to its customers (HBR article (Porter 2008)). We've seen this movie. It ends with 4.8% growth and thin margins.

Run PESTLE before you commit capital

PESTLE examines Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental macro factors (CFA Institute). Most teams treat this as a checkbox. Don't. Two factors are load-bearing right now.

Technological: about 47% of researchers globally use AI regularly in market research, and 83% of market research professionals planned to invest in AI in 2025 (Similarweb / Research and Markets). That's not a side trend. It's a re-pricing of the services layer. If 47% of researchers already use AI regularly, the labor arbitrage that funded traditional full-service models is eroding.

Legal and social: the ICC/ESOMAR International Code is mandatory for Esomar members and endorsed by over 60 associations across more than 50 countries (ICC/ESOMAR International Code). If you're selling across borders, compliance isn't optional. It's a barrier to entry that favors established players — and a cost you must price into your model.

Pick a strategic group and stop straddling

A strategic group is a set of firms following similar competitive approaches (Mastering Strategic Management (open textbook)). The insights industry has at least four: global full-service networks, boutique specialists, software platforms, and reporting/dashboard providers. Your closest competitors are in your own group. Other groups show alternative paths. Gaps in the map reveal niches.

The single biggest mistake we see is straddling. A firm is 'stuck in the middle' when it lacks unique features and its prices are too high to compete on price (University of Central Florida Pressbooks). That's the default outcome for mid-sized insights firms that try to be everything. Porter noted that strategy is as much about deciding what you won't do as what you will do (University of Central Florida Pressbooks).

So here's the concrete recommendation for our hypothetical $40 million firm. Don't try to out-scale the global networks. Don't try to out-engineer the software platforms. Pick one of two viable positions:

• Differentiated specialist: own a vertical (e.g., media and entertainment, which was 15.5% of market research spending) and charge a premium for proprietary methods and senior talent.
• Software-enabled services: productize your delivery with AI and proprietary tooling, and compete on speed and cost per insight.

Either way, you must answer the software question. The research software sector grew about 11.5% in 2024 (ESOMAR via Research World). If you're not participating in that growth, you're shrinking in relative terms.

Bottom line

The single best move: define your strategically relevant market, then pick a strategic group and commit. Don't chase the $150 billion headline. Serve a defined slice, price for the value you uniquely create, and build or buy the software layer that's growing at 11.5%. The firms that win the next five years won't be the biggest. They'll be the clearest about what they are not.

Sources

• CFA Institute - https://www.cfainstitute.org/insights/professional-learning/refresher-readings/2026/industry-and-competitive-analysis
• ESOMAR via Research World - https://researchworld.com/articles/inside-the-153bn-insights-industry
• ESOMAR via Research World (Asia Pacific) - https://researchworld.com/articles/the-remarkable-ascent-of-asia-pacific-in-global-insights
• Harvard Business Review (Porter 2008) - https://hbr.org/2008/01/the-five-competitive-forces-that-shape-strategy
• Similarweb / Research and Markets - https://www.similarweb.com/blog/research/market-research/market-research-stats/
• ICC/ESOMAR International Code - https://iccwbo.org/news-publications/business-solutions/iccesomar-international-code-market-opinion-social-research-data-analytics/