By: Fredrik Bentlinger, CFO 

After almost twenty years within different positions as a controller or CFO within a variety of businesses, ranging from professional services to retailers with global distributions, I have the latter years been in charge of Cint financials.

People always ask me what Cint does and there are as many misconceptions as there are people. Usually I respond with a couple questions to start off with;

Do you call your broker to buy or sell stock?

Do you call every single airline to check for prices and available flights?

Do you visit a bank office every time you need to transfer money?

OR can you do this efficiently and safely online?

Apparently the market research world in general prefers to do it the old way by calling/e-mailing a number of sample providers to check availability and prices; they also prefer to involve a number of project managers to help them run all these quotas and feasibility checks. For some reason the industry in general prefers to do business the old-fashioned way requiring increased time and does require a significant number of people on payroll to manage. It is truly astonishing that an end-client, in 2013, still accepts to pay for this expensive, out-of-date process.

Cint runs the only automated and transparent global marketplace for buying and selling sample – simple as that.  Cint does not own panels nor does Cint sell solely to end-clients. Cint runs a marketplace where anyone – yes anyone – can hook up to buy or sell sample. Today we have more than 10 million (double opted-in) panelists in some 57 countries, making Cint by far the largest supplier of sample that is open to anyone.

Market researchers are beginning to understand the benefits of launching projects within minutes on a Friday afternoon and get the results after the weekend – saving both time and money. There are clear signs of movement away from the old processes of manual labor, and automated processes will definitely change the ways market researches work just as the Amadeus system revolutionized flight travel, online stock trading replaced brokerages  and  online banking changed the behavior of millions of people. The internal walls within MR companies will soon fall and any CFO can instantly calculate enormous ROIs by allowing the change to take place. The only hurdles overcome are the internal legacy reasons that are put forward. No company has ever become successful by protecting inefficient processes whilst neglecting the winds of change.

No wonder the market research industry is stretching their cash-flow models to the limit when their supply chains are under-optimized and building up enormous amounts of working capital, but that is another story… 

By: Stephen Hughes, UK Managing Director

The horse meat scandal that hit the EU recently is an uncomfortable reminder to us all that there are still plenty of unscrupulous organisations and individuals prepared to lie, deceive and do just about anything to maximise profits at the expense of the consumer.

You don’t need me to remind you that the scandal involved unethical food suppliers taking advantage of long, and often fairly complex supply chains to pass off cheaper horse meat as beef and other meat products whilst charging the higher price. Further investigation showed the extent of the deception and quite disturbingly, in some instances, pork was sold as halal meat.

Of course there’s nothing wrong with horse meat and it’s perfectly safe for human consumption, and indeed it is enjoyed in many countries in the EU. However, what caused the outcry was the extent of deception and the fact that people were being charged for a perceived inferior product (of course many of us animal loving Brits find the idea of eating a horse akin to eating a dog or other domestic animals).

The scandal also brought to light significant failures in the food-testing abilities of the government and the shops that sold the meat, which ultimately led to a massive loss of confidence and trust in those retailers who many perceived as acting too late. In fact, you could say public perception was that they were closing the stable door after the horse had bolted (pun definitely intended).

Why did this happen?

There will always be greedy and unethical people whatever the industry, but to my mind, the main factor was the continuing price pressures faced by suppliers combined with less than rigorous quality checks. In fact, recent news stories suggest the same level of deception is present in other industries (toxic mortgages, Libor rate rigging, mis-sold energy tariffs, etc) suggesting these practices may well be widespread.

So, we in the research industry can sit back, fold our arms and think, “That could never happen in research.” Think again. The bad news is that the equivalent of this is happening in our industry right now.

You may not be aware of it but the provision of online sample is frighteningly similar to the food supply chain. Both can be complex and in the case of sample, there is rarely any transparency on where the sample has come from, and what or how many other suppliers are contributing to providing the sample for your project. A failure in any of the links in the supply chain mean that the project is undelivered and you stand to lose a client.

This is bad enough, but recent developments have almost exactly mirrored the horse meat scandal and that is river sample being passed off and sold as double opted-in panel sample. Like the horse meat scandal, it is more widespread among less-than-ethical sample providers.

Let me stress though that like horse meat there is absolutely nothing wrong with river sample (intercepting people online to answer a survey) and it can be very useful to use for some sample requirements. However, river sample is significantly cheaper to deliver than panel sample – mainly because you never really know who is answering the survey and the incentive amounts are much lower. So, if you are buying river sample, you should be paying much less than panel sample. But what we are actually seeing is researchers getting river sample and being charged panel prices.

Sounds familiar doesn’t it? If we take the horse meat analogy further, research agencies can be thought of as the retailer in this scenario and we only need to see the damage done to the reputation of Tesco and Iceland here in the UK to understand how detrimental this could potentially be to agencies.

To avoid any issues it is therefore crucial for researchers to make themselves more aware of where their sample comes from. Transparency of sample source is the key and whenever buying sample, you should always insist suppliers confirm in writing that the sample they are providing is from a double-opted in panel.

It’s your reputation on the line.

Our CEO, Bo Mattsson, discusses DIY trends and technology with Bob Lederer of the Research Business Daily Report here.