Boiler room scam of epic proportions
I’m working in one of Big Four accounting/consulting firms. We do a lot of in-house market research and regularly buy/subscribe outside market reports. Lately, I see a number of old and established boutique market research firms to close their offices in the face of increased competition from fake market research cottage industry sprouted mostly for the Indian city of Pune.
Freshly baked Indian MBA’s are churning out thousands of new market reports weekly, playing SEO game on any meaningful word combination. The “analysts” in the Indian (don’t blame me, racist I’m not) sweatshops have never left their city or village in their life, less so worked in the industry they write about. In SEO game quality does not matter, only quantity.
The small US or European market research boutiques that rely on analysts with extensive industry experience, do time-consuming surveys and interviews, dig in corporate reports and publish or maintain a few dozen report topics on annual basis are loosing in this brutal spam onslaught. It’s like going old Western style with 6-loaded Colt against hydraulically driven seven-barrel Gatling-type aircraft gun spitting 3,000 round per minute.
Market research spammers clogged not only production, they clogged also all arteries of market research PR and distribution. Take a look at this press release distribution site — OpenPR.com, it’s a dump of market report announcements written under the same template, you will not find there in-depth analysis, original insight, or unconventional wisdom because they are not there.
They have different names — Transparency Market Research, MarkertsandMarkets, and countless others. Try to search in Google “market research Pune” — you’ll get the picture. They turned useless largest distributors of market reports MarketResearch.com and ResearchandMarkets.com, into a huge unmanageable pile of garbage.
The bottomline question is how to recognize spam. It’s easy and it’s not by country of origin which is hidden behind London’s or Boston’s bought address. No market research publisher, with the exception of the respectable industry giants like Gartner and Forrester, can research in depth, publish and maintain thousands of reports, not in a week, not in a year, not in the lifetime. Look for market research companies that cover specific niches and have in the portfolio a few dozens of reports.
Mass production of low quality market reports
MarkertsandMarkets
Transparency Market Research
Persistence Market Research
Technavio
FMI Future Market Insights
QYResearch
ResearchandMarkets.com
Marketresearchfuture.com
Anybody familiar with Mordor Intelligence in India?
I have never assessed them but here is some guidance on what to look for as you do:
• Do they sell research for a very broad range of industries, ie no specialty?
• Check if located in India or China. Call any U.S. number they give and see if it’s just a U.S. cell in India – call U.S. time when it would be the middle of the night — probably no one will answer.
• Is the website kept up to date, check the press releases and blog?
• How is the English on the site; is it poorly structured English and a big mash up of business jargon?
• Check the job postings: are all the jobs in India, are they only looking for ~2 years experience, is their search more for IT or analysts?
I agree – Frost & Sullivan is not what it used to be, once a flagship market research company turned into generic template report peddler. Actually we should recognize that the market research industry has changed irrevocably in many senses:
1. Neat year-by-year segment breakdown table forecasts are things of the past, neither they are believable anymore, nor sustainable. Pune template reports are dead, these scamsters killed the market that fed them. Well, they will stay online, they will still con a few suckers but in the long run they are doomed.
2. Big Tech companies (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta) do not believe in market forecasts, they believe in trial and error, cannibalizing their product/service lines if needed, in fast and continuous launch of new products and services.
3. Big consulting companies (Deloitte, KPMG, McKinsey, EY, Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, Accenture, PricewaterhouseCoopers, etc) are producing excellent market overviews which are deep, knowledgeable, trustworthy and absolutely free.
4. If you have difficulty to reasonably estimate an addressable market for a specific segment that’s probably because this information does not exist. To assume that some bogus report will deliver the goods is outright stupid. Uncertainty is a part of business, more so in regards to future forecasts.
Let us just recognize this – “market X is growing from $135M to $3.5B over the next 5 years at a 126% CAGR” is thing of the past.
LinkedIn offers a lot of big tells. You will find employees who are affiliated with multiple entities, as well as management and CEOs who cross-manage entities. Once one corporate name becomes toxic, the LLC simply changes.
GlobalData is a real company. It offers reports and data, often of high quality. Frost isn’t what it used to be. Most of the better firms do customer work, or are highly focused on specific verticals — Gartner, Forrester, and the like. Each industry has a few specialists. Custom work can run $20,000-$500,000, or more, depending on scope and effort, ranging from original research to surveys. Most organizations 1.) want quick, cheap results and get what they pay for — a $2,500-$5,000 “report” that’s available as a page 1 Google result, 2.) don’t know how to scope and manage a proper research plan and 3.) don’t want to pay for it. Many organizations are so immature about market analysis that all they care about is the confirmation bias of “market X is growing from $135M to $3.5B over the next 5 years at a 126% CAGR.”
I feel bad for young business school graduates who get sucked into the book report mills. I was charged with salvaging an effort where a team had bought one of these reports, no questions asked. In this instance, there was some gold that required more panning. I ended up taking the free hours, provided some training and insights, and the “analyst” did some great work. Budget/time/resources would have allowed me to cultivate someone with promising skills.
Techsci research based in Noida. Also produce only shit. Do not ever buy they have only 10 analyst and all data points are fake.
DONT BUY THIS SHIT!
I can only agree here.
Have bought a report in the construction sector from marketresearchreportstore.com and marketresearchstore.com, and the data quality is total rubbish. e.g. according to their information, our company only makes 10% of the actual turnover. other data is also totally generic, a correlation to GDP or similar is simply assumed everywhere.
I am currently in contact with Marketresearchstore.com. Good thing I found your comment.
Cheers!
As per my experience marketresearch.biz into the list of production of low quality reports. It is just a scam & nothing else.
They don’t even know how to do quality Research.
We bought a 3.000$ report from https://www.marketresearchstore.com. It is an unimaginative scam. Market size and future outlook does not connect to reality at all. It is a scam. Don’t buy there. The website says they are from Pune, India. Global Voip phone numbers.
Be aware that some market research firms that churn out a large number of reports DO design their own survey instruments and collect data with them from real and active respondents, or use data collected from a legit and sometimes recognized third party. And right, they have absolutely no association with Pune, and they won’t do such silly things as searching for data via the internet to paste into their reports or using the same template for all projects for years. The problem mainly lies, first, in the methodology of survey: low and sometimes ridiculous psychometrics of their (or the third parties’) instruments, samples of respondents who are obviously poorly positioned to answer some critical questions, and horribly inflated sample sizes; then second, in presentation and interpretion of data: carpet bombing with chartjunks, conclusion that some value is smaller or larger than appropriate WITHOUT even specifiying the “appropriate”, and so on. These craps are more dangerous and may survive longer than the Pune-style scamming as they are superficially justifiable, but basic to moderate knowledge in social survey plus some critical thinking can blow any disguise.
What about Statista? Anyone have experience with them? Do they aggregate from the companies from Pune?
I have never used Statista but checked out their website and can say they do not appear as one of the fake Pune firms. They offer a reasonable subscription for their statistics, have some nice infographics, and even their reports are not as broad or as expensive as the Indian firms. I also checked out their job offers and that, while not real encouraging with the openings for sales equal to analyst openings, they are searching for German speaking analysts for this German company so they clearly seem to not be a front for an Indian research team.
I have worked for one of these “top 3” fake research companies in Pune for a significant amount of time. These are mostly founded and run by people who have earlier worked for not more than 3 to 5 years in bigger fake research companies. They recruit fresh graduates from tier 3 or tier 2 B-schools who could not find a decent job. The so called ‘analysts’ working in their technology research domain have zero years of industry experience. Yet they are presented to the clients as domain experts for different domains (on different occasions) ranging from networking, telecom, enterprise software. data centers, AI, space technology, blockchain, 5G and so on. A common template is used for estimating market sizes for these reports. The analysts estimate the size of these markets in 3 to 4 days.
Yes, “3 to 4 days” for estimating the size of any technology/software/healthcare/chemical/materials market globally, broken down into product types. end-use industries, industry applications, 5 regions split into 5-6 countries each. (All this can be customized as per client requirements)
These companies not only make a fool out of small scale companies looking for low-cost research, but they manage to sell and resell these reports to some of the global giants in all these sectors. The sales teams as well the research managers (who have no domain experience of working in the industry) have developed an impressive process to onboard such companies. The client representatives are often middle-level executives such product managers, marketing managers who are in need for urgent market insights as they’ve got to give a presentation to their CEO or to their clients.
This very urgency is exploited swiftly by these research companies as they promise a comprehensive research report covering market estimates and growth forecasts for next 6 to 10 years, along with market drivers, constraints, SWOT analysis, company profiles, competitive benchmarking, and similar other sections. All of this is promised to be delivered in a short timeline of 4 to 5 business days. IF the client does not want to wait for 5 days, they propose delivery of report in parts. company profiles (Copy-pasted from press releases) in 2 days, industry analysis (copy-pasted from google results, blogs, whitepapers) in 3 days, and market estimates (with no actual industry workflow knowledge) on the last day. I’ve seen a lot of companies (from start-ups to technology giants such as CIS, MICRO, INTL, HUAW) fall for such offers.
The 300 page report is crap filled with content written by fresh graduates who do not know what they are writing about (An electronics graduate may author reports on the construction material / polymer/pharma industry). These companies use tools as ‘COPYSCAPE’ to make sure all the content copied from blogs, press releases, and company annual reports is rephrased and it is free from plagiarism. This is one of such many investments made by these companies to cover up their scam working model.
why these companies succeed (the ones who excel at playing the SEO, SALES, and Packaging game):
1) They hire and maintain an SEO army. 50 to 100/200 people working round-the-clock, constantly optimizing titles on google search results by playing with all the possible keywords related to a particular market.
2) Significant investment in posting their press releases on all possible PR websites
3) Every such company has at least 2 to 3 different websites selling the same reports under different packaging at different price points
4) A web of reseller websites who only concentrate on getting the google ranking by only employing SEO and sales people.
5) Fake/questionable claims about being associated with top industry players
6) Fake claims about having highly experienced domain experts. The scam is sometimes exposed when a client asks really simple domain related questions to these analysts and they can’t answer
7) THEY PROMISE EVERYTHING. The sales and the research guys are given strict instructions that they cannot say ‘NO’ to the client. Once the client pays for the report, then you can decide how to find the data. If you cannot find the data, ‘CREATE IT’.
8) the same old discount game
I can write a book on how these companies operate and how people spoil their careers by staying for long in such companies. Almost 50 odd research companies set up shop in Pune every year. Most of these shut down. The only ones who excel at all these gimmicks, survive and thrive.
It is an amazing phenomena, how this scam has got such a traction. A this single template, that is filled 100,000’s of times, literally over and over again. Interesting, now they in general reveal less and less info. In the past they’d put sample pages up to see but now they hide those, to conceal the lies more carefully. The update the front cover, really jazz that up to make it look impressive but just study the index of contents and think about it. How implausible it is that the research on any given subject you can think of, plus a 1000 more. Try it. Search in Google for … global market reports sausage meat. Now try another: … global market reports paper clips …. global market reports condom rubber. Ludicrous. One of their popular outlets is in Linkedin and I suspect this is very lucrative territory for them all, and worst of all Linkedin does nothing about it. Perhaps they are participants, who knows. Report them, and they do nothing about it. Amazing global scam based on a crazy template that is sold via a syndicated pyramid scheme. Teach your marketing departments NEVER to spend money on these. Ring the national phone numbers put out by the market sellers, and google map the stated (always false) addresses.
I would add Fact.MR to this list. https://www.factmr.com/
Looks like they are the same company as FMI Future Market Insights, as their sales rep had a link to this video in their email signature.
Thanks for this great thread! Has anyone worked with Prudour Pvt. (market.biz)?
They are Resellers.
Scammer no . 1
Proudor sells mass produced Chinese Reports
Thank you very much, Elias! I appreciate your response and guidance very much!
Hi, does anyone know something about Meticulous Research and Market Precise?
They are not mentioned by anybody below and I’m just wondering if they are also scam companies. They are in India but not from Pune.
Can anybody help?
If they are from India, most likely they are low quality aggregators without any knowledge of the market in question whatever it is.
Global market Insights scam Review
This article is spot on and speaks out the truth. The market research companies operating in India are next to those online pop up scams looting thousands of dollars out the pockets of startup companies. One such companies I worked with in the past known as Global Market Insights Pvt Ltd was so special in scamming the companies abroad. http://www.gminsights.com
How can someone carve out a market research report within a week or couple of days sitting on a PC desk without having any prior knowledge of the field or the industry workflow. Yes they hire the so called MBA people teach them the nonsense to manipulate market data and mass produce reports. The joke is they use some ready made templates, where changing and manipulating the numbers is called market research according to them.
There are thousands of market research companies operating in India. While most of them have accumulated a considerable amount of wealth, some do survive from the apartments consisting of 4 or 5 employees only.
The below is how Global Market Insights operates ? And this is not limited to them , instead all of the market research companies follow the same procedure to print money out of thin air.
1) The so called research guys mass produce market research reports by manipulating the numbers every year, thus filling and updating the database with thousands and literally millions of such unworthy market reports.
2 ) the content or editorial team refines the content to make it look world class by adding some more shit collected from Google.
3) then the SEO game starts by buying subscriptions of Google news websites which the market research companies utilize to spam the search engine inorder to outrank each other.
4) the luckiest one who ranks atop in google news section for a particular search querry recieves an inquiry from the customers before the sales team starts engaging to trap them with sweet and fake conversations.
Global market Insights does not stop here. They go far ahead in this game by running a reseller website as well — marketstudyreport.com . The website resells ultra mass produced Chinese Reports to stay ahead in the SEO game to deliver all search querries of the customers. This all proves the double standard followed by GMInsights. “No we don’t care about selling genuine data, rather we exist to scam you and make instant money” — this is what best describes Global Market Insights Pvt Ltd.
These are some more fake ones in Pune . I have worked in one of these and can say they all are earning in millions $- easily around 1-2 million$ . they all are putting clients names and logos which must be illegal — how can they use their logos? can some one tell. All of them have fancy offices and attract freshers to join-
List is below
https://www.theresearchinsights.com/
https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/
https://www.indexmarketsresearch.com/
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/
http://www.winstepglobal.com/
https://www.fiormarkets.com/
https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/
https://www.qyresearch.com/
https://www.wiseguyreports.com/
https://www.gminsights.com/
Up Market Research https://www.upmarketresearch.com
Growth Market Reports https://growthmarketreports.com
https://www.absolutemarketsinsights.com/
Anybody suggest to me any market research firm in Japan so that I can buy from them
Beware of Zion market research and MarketResearchStore.com. They both are basically the same company. I worked there for a couple of years. They produce reports on a mass basis with timelines of 4-5 working days. An actual research report needs atleast 30 days for accurate data. The analysts are filled with Freshers over there. Please do not ever buy reports from these guys!
So glad I found this and didn’t drink the koolaid. Im in search of a space market research and am looking at EuroConsult. Any word on them? Thank you for the guidance.
What’s the consensus on Global Market Insights?
Just google map their Global Headquarters under About Us on the web site (Global Market Insights, Inc. 4 North Main Street, Selbyville, Delaware 19975).
I could not figure out how to paste in here. Anyway, you will have your answer. When I researched them in the past their web site said they are in Pune, India with this same U.S. address. Pune is the hotbed of these fake report firms — many young business graduates that churn out fake reports. They have gotten better at hiding that they are in India or China. But other telltale signs are the breadth of the research they do … too broad to have any focus and deep understanding of a particular industry. But these firms don’t even try as their real expertise is marketing them to us professionals, pushing them in our inboxes each and every day.
The consensus is DONT buy.
Hi Maxine, Thanks for sharing your views.
I have gone through research methodology of GlobalData. They also follow method of estimation and primary validation as followed by other low end market research firms. I think analyst reputation is the key.
I also have a doubt whether in-depth global analysis can be performed within $2000-$5000. Many other high end market research houses are quoting $40,000-$50,000 for in-depth reports with similar index.
What about Frost & Sullivan, BCC Research and GlobalData? Are they also fake as others.. as I have seen they also publish lots of report. I have also seen their number of employees which is not sufficient enough to produce these number of reports. Confused… Shall I buy report from them or not?
I’m not familiar with GlobalData but their website looks just like another faceless aggregator. BCC is an old name, they have been always low-end market research publisher.
Frost & Sullivan used to be one of the top brands in market research golden days, just like Gartner and Forrester. Not anymore, old analysts with deep knowledge of industries covered are long gone. Now it’s a sweatshop for MBAs looking for entry-level jobs.
None of the above firms provide deep market insights.
We buy from GlobalData and there are actual people in offices doing actual analyses.
Just an aggregation of all the SCAM companies listed:
Absolute Market Insights
Absolute Reports
expertmarketresearch.com
FMI Future Market Insights
Grand View Researc
HTF Market Intelligence
QYResearch
LP Information
Lucintel
MarkertsandMarkets
Marketresearchfuture.com
MarketResearch.com
Market Research Store
Persistence Market Research
Pioneer Reports
prophecymarketinsights.com
QYResearch
ReportLinker
ReportBuyer
ResearchandMarkets.com
Research Nester
ResearchNReports
Technavio
theresearchinsights.com
Transparency Market Research
Wise Guy Reports
Zion Market Research
add 24hourreports and variations of the name to the list, which is tip of the scamberg.
Thank you for your insghts and thoughts, all!
How about MarketLine? Does anyone have any experiences or information about their credbility?
Thank you for this post! I wish I found it much earlier.
Please add Absolute Market Insights to this list. Shamelessly horrible report quality.
As a few have mentioned, could you please recommend reputable market research firms? I’m specifically looking for reliable information around the size of the digital health market, and google search results are literally inundated with these fake market research companies.
This blog is immensely helpful, and I wholeheartedly agree with the conclusions of James from May 5, 2019. It’s been a while since I was in need of good market research on a topic, so it’s great to be able to compile a list of scam companies to avoid from everyone feedback.
Several people asked for references of reputable market firms. While I agree with James ( i.e. “All professional quality market researches are either (A) on demand for each customer, or (B) regular annual reports from a nation-wide association for each particular industry.”) I have found, at least in the semiconductor and optical communications business, that the companies listed below have produced average to good quality reports. It’s always good to check the CV of the analysts that did the report and interview the analyst before committing. Try checking on the accuracy of the analysts’ previous market projections by looking at some of their older reports. As James indicates, good quality research is that which you contract for and which takes more than a few weeks, so budget for it and set up a weekly status call to make sure the analyst is on track. And ask to be a part of a few of the interviews (or at least read the interview transcripts) that the analyst conducts.
Yole (HQ in France)
Gartner
IHS Market technology – (now part of Omdia)
Frost and Sullivan
IDC (International Data Corp – Boston based)
CIR-inc (small company in Virginia – focused on optical comms)
I’ve also heard that Forrester is reputable but have no experience with them.
Anybody else have opinions/experiences of these companies you’d like to share?
Other reputable analyst firms:
Forrester Research
ABI Research
Analysys Mason
Constellation Research
Enterprise Management Associates (EMA)
Omdia /part of Informa Tech (Ovum and IHS Markit are now rebranded as Omdia)
Strategy Analytics
451 Group (now part of S&P Global Intelligence)
Dell’Oro Group
Parks Associates
NPD Group
The Economist Intelligence Unit
Has anyone had experience with Lucintel? If yes, what did you think of the quality of their research?
A company that makes so many reports covering so many different industries is for me just impossible. No one can have a deep knowledge to so many diverse industries. As said before next time you would like to invest in any market report whatever is the topic, ask first the CV of the authors. And even better call them to discuss with the authors to see if they have really a background that fits with the report/industry they cover.
Check also the management, often they are many fake profiles, etc… do your homework before buying.
Any one knows anything about IEG VU? This would help. Thanks
Alex
I just received a report Market Research Future, terrible report. I would never use them again.
how much did it cost you, or cost a colleague. I blame outlets like Linkedin who take no action whatsoever to keep them off their pages.
Thank you guys for listing the bad players in the market research industry. Do you guys know which companies that actually are professional and reliable?
– Erik
I can truly support all the comments above, unfortunately, in 2016 I bought a report from Transparency Market Research for my company, the price was nearly $4.000 and in the end, we purchased it for $1.500. I can assure that the data and information in the report are worth $0, all the data is inconsistent and the forecast is a linear 5% across all the data.
This post confirmed my suspicions and helped me to advice many other colleagues in my company to not purchase this kind of report, each month I receive an email from different colleagues asking my department to buy this report.
Surprisingly if you look for the turnover of some of these companies are incredibly high, the last one that I was looking for was Markets and Markets, and their turnover is $20M!!
http://www.hoovers.com/company-information/company-search.html?term=markets and markets research private
It is so unfair that these companies earn so much money scamming other companies, they are degrading the market research industry…
Also I would like to add these companies:
Melvin Bright
Ceresana
Market Prognosis
Big Market Research
KBV Research
I hope this article and comments help other companies as it helped me and my company.
Patricia, Can you share your experience with Ceresana? I do not see any connection to India or China but that does not mean it is not another sham group that just has a western address. I do see their website is very new so that makes me suspicious that they are just a new face for one of the old lot. They are getting better at hiding their origins. Appreciate.
Hi Marilyn, as you say they are getting better at hiding their origins. I could not find any relation in Ceresana’s case, but the sample reports, the structure, prices… are very similar to other companies. I’m sure that if you request some info about a report, they will discount and discount so they can steal money from you…
This is a list of fake companies , All fake reports fake linkedin accounts
prophecymarketinsights.com
expertmarketresearch.com
Add the research insights theresearchinsights.com to the scam list. They claim their office to be in U.S. but their linkedin profile says they are based in Pune.
I agree. I’ve received table of contents of one of their “reports” and even at that very high level it contained several absurdities.
Research Nester is also a pile of garbage. Since, they are exposed by IPVM, now they have created a new website KENNETH RESEARCH to scam people.
I think you can also file Wise Guy Reports under the scam-section. almost bought a report from them but glad I found these comments before.
The index they sent (and also the product caterogization) looked identical to 3 other offers of other pages I received. They all had sales staff from India.
How do you find the proper versions of these scam houses??
This article and comments have been very useful. I have been in contact with three of these companies, for a very specialized report in my sector.
– QY Research
– LP Information
– Transparency Market Research
The table of contents was pretty much the same among all three companies, and the only thing that differed was the packaging and looks of the sample reports and graphs. They were too eager and pushy to make a sale and the only reassurance they were offering on their reliability was their word. Fortunately, due to my past experience of having worked both in an industry association and at a specialized consultancy, I was not convinced and didn’t purchase from any of them. Reading these comments, I am happy I did not. fall for this trap.
Is there any online community/group (maybe LinkedIn?) where we can consult based on people’s past experience on the reliability of market research companies? Maybe a good idea would be to create such a community/group in LinkedIn and create some lists of reliable research companies per sector.
Let me know your thoughts on how we can make our work more efficient.
Thank you for bringing this up.
Ashamed, but I was actually working for Transparency Market Research earlier. Like the article says, and all the comments, it’s all fake. The so-called CEOs and founders have extensive experience of fewer than 5 years in the industry. All healthcare reports have “geriatric population” as a market driver (LOL).
I was only fortunate that I got good guidance from my seniors and left the industry before it was too late for me. Can somebody please put this on LinkedIn and tag all these companies? Alert must be sent to other buyers who are unaware of these fake companies.
We wish that we had come across this article and the subsequent posts before being scammed by GMR Analytics (www.gmranalytics.com), another fake market research company that definitely needs to be added on the above list of market research scams.
We bought a really very bad quality “research report” from GMR Analytics (www.gmranalytics.com) and found that it was full of plagiarism, had numerous factual and grammatical errors and hardly made any sense. The report had general data copied from Internet and had no any market analysis as such.
We did some research about GMR Analytics (www.gmranalytics.com) and found that the company is not physically located at the address – 181 Carolla Bay, Carolla Gables, FL, 33134, USA – as it claims on its website.
Beware, GMR Analytics (www.gmranalytics.com) is a scam!
Add “Pioneer Reports: to this List http://pioneerreports.com
I brought report from them and it was all useless with all fake numbers.
I used to work for the most corrupt research company, Technavio. I joined there last year, and I was shocked to death after knowing that I was expected to research (read copy and paste) and write a report in three days. I started looking for a job on my second day of joining this scam research company. Thankfully, I managed to get out of the company in 3 months.
Technavio has only freshers who have no idea about the market research/market size estimation, and they are the one who is writing the reports. They do not do any primary research or conduct any interviews. What they do is look for the market size through google and increase/decrease the same by +-1 percent.
After working for this company for three months, I realized how these syndicated research companies are fooling the clients in the name of the report, which is done by freshers in three straight days.
Do not buy any market research reports from Indian research companies; most of them are a scam.
I was in a very good chemical consulting company where the quality of the research was very good. Then, I changed my company and got a job in one of the companies listed above as they were offering a very good hike thinking that they do almost same kind of work. But when I joined that syndicate company in Pune, I realized that they are covering every aspect which is given by a consulting company, however, syndicate company was giving the data in just 15 -17 business days and the consulting company is covering all aspects with authenticate data in ~2 months (8 weeks). The work of these syndicate company was so pathetic that I was shocked, there was no primary research, no validation, no insights from industry experts. It was full of bullshit, just an overview was sufficient for them. One sentence is written by twisting and turning the same point just in order to utilize the given space in the template. I couldn’t digest the quality of reports, I wasn’t satisfied at all and I left the company within 4 months to join a consulting company. The number of projects – syndicate company: ~10–12 projects were done in 4 months compared to the number of projects that I did in the consulting company in 13–15 months. The syndicate research companies of Pune pay very very high which attracts the job seekers. The promotions are also very rapid. There are many brilliant analysts which have fallen in this trap. It would be good if the client asks for interview transcripts to these syndicate companies based in Pune, then they would understand the authenticity of data.
I heard even frost & sullivan is bleeding due to onslaught of Indian and Chinese firms…dont be surprised if they scale down significantly…..smaller ones (genuine niche research firms) are going out of business
NO real marketing research firm EVER does a actual quality market research / report just to sell that report online. All companies claiming they do this are pure scammers. All professional quality market researches are either (A) on demand for each customer, or (B) regular annual reports from a nation-wide association for each particular industry. There is no (C). Whoever is looking for (C) will only find fake reports generated overnight with a very brief overview of the industry (available anywhere on internet) and a list of major player, which are used .to make the table of contents and “sample” look credible.
Add this one to the list of FAKE market researches / reports: Absolute Reports
hey James, i am talking to these guys now. why do you think they are FAKE? i am not getting a good vibe either but not sure as they have all these “clients” posted on their website.
I am in a similar spot did you end up moving forward with them?
Next time you would like to invest in any market report, whatever is the topic, ask first the CV of the author. This will give you a better insight to its value than the table of content or the number of pages.
There are several well-known companies that provide reports on different industries, generally they specialized in one industry or a market segment, but no one is able to cover thousands of reports in a year like those guys in India, it just does not make sense.
But all these so called market research companies based in India are all providing reports that have zero value, written by people who have absolutely no knowledge about the industry they cover. These reports provides limited and useless information, publishing hundreds to thousands of reports on all kind of subjects simply throwing numbers that they have automatically generated by Googling, always making optimistic and unsupported projections, then publishing daily press releases. You can check through Google and realize that they use hundreds of fake news websites to publish press releases that promote their reports and when you check the website you can realize that the authors are all fake
There are plenty of low quality reports, but which do you see as the good ones?
You’ll only get a real, decent quality report from some national associations for each particular industry. There is no such thing as “global” reports for any industry available online with credit card purchases.
What about Grand View Research then? Same?
The same, the worst kind.
Hello Everyone,
Below is a list of the questionable Research firms mentioned in the comments.
Blacklist (mass production of low quality reports):
– MarketsandMarkets
– Transparency Market Research
– Persistence Market Research
– Technavio
– FMI Future Market Insights
– QYResearch
– Marketresearchfuture.com
– ResearchNReports
– Zion Market Research
– HTF Market Intelligence
– ResearchandMarkets.com
– ReportLinker
– ReportBuyer
Furthermore, I would be interested if there exists a list of credible and reliable market research firms. It would be very helpful if you guys could name companies you have made good experiences with in the past. I am especially interested in firms that provided quality reports concerning the medical device industry.
Thank you!
Moritz, as I wrote in my previous comment:
“NO real marketing research firm EVER does a actual quality market research / report just to sell that report online. All companies claiming they do this are pure scammers. All professional quality market researches are either (A) on demand for each customer, or (B) regular annual reports from a nation-wide association for each particular industry. There is no (C). Whoever is looking for (C) will only find fake reports generated overnight with a very brief overview of the industry (available anywhere on internet) and a list of major player, which are used .to make the table of contents and “sample” look credible. ”
Keep in mind that even the top consulting and market research firms don’t have any specialists in each industry who know everything inside out, and ALWAYS rely on a number of industry specialists, interviews, and other industry data when preparing their ports. McKinsey, Accenture, Deloitte, etc. – they DON’T KNOW your industry and will hire outside specialists and industry professionals to give them some insights and data, which will cost YOU a lot of money and will not guarantee good results.
You are much safer in obtaining real, quality market research reports by checking associations of an industry you are interested in and seeing which annual market reports they have. Then schedule an appointment with them to review in-person the available report to see if that’s what you are looking for. But before that, you have to know your industry yourself first well – if not with your experience, then at least your own research.
Oxford Economics sells online, yet they too are commissioned by serious associations alike to do the study.
Hi, have you heard about Market Research Store? Is this the same case?
Just another pile of garbage.
Hi,
I recently had the displeasure of purchasing a market report from HTF Market Intelligence. They promised to charge USD 6,400 to satisfy my requirements to do in – depth analysis of a market. Once they received payment, they communicated that the report will cost an additional USD 900. When I had a very serious conversation with them on the phone over this issue, HTF realised they could not justify the price and said that USD 900 was communicated by mistake.
Thinking back they were an indian firm in Pune with a US ‘address’ and phone number that would be re-routed to India,
Fast forward a week and a half, and they provided me a sub-standard report that a student in high school would deliver. Over 90% of my requirements were not met. When I communicated with them, they would send an auto – response saying they will look into it. Its been 3 weeks and I have not had any response.
I work for a global consulting firm, and during the proposal process, HTF mentioned my firm had a long standing relationship with them. In hindsight, this was all a lie. After receiving the quality of their report, I doubt anyone in my firm would even consider having a relationship with them.
Is their any way I can lodge a complaint?
Thanks.
I would also like to mention two sales employees who were the main points in contact in HTF Market Intelligence are Praveen Kumar and Deepshikha Bhati. They were very active sales employees when they were pitching in for the report. After the receiving payment for the report, they refuse to answer calls. On the rare occasion that some one answers the phone, they cook up a story that saying that their sales team is not in office until 6 pm local time, and the only way to reach them is through office land line. When you call at their recommended time, there is no answer. This is highly unprofessional behavior of HTF Market Intelligence..
I had the misfortune of working with them and fell for their scam. I am posting this message as I don’t want any one else to be in my shoes. Hopefully the next time some one googles HTF Market Intelligence, my review pops up and a potential client is aware of this scam.
Their full address is:
Head Office (IN)
107,1st Floor,Town Square,Viman Nagar
Pune India – 411014
Branch Office (US):
HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited
Unit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJ
New Jersey USA – 08837
[email protected]
Dear,
I went through the same thing with them.
Indeed I also believe them to run a scam. The report I received was substandard to say the least, not one new insight, just copy paste work from different websites, a lot of mistakes, no real content, and all the numbers they refer to were clearly wrong and it was very obvious that the person who wrote the study had no clue whatsoever about the industry he was writing on. (it was about the carpet and rug industry)
I was in contact with the same people that you mention above; Praveen Kumar and Deepshikha Bhati. but also with Neeraj Baghel (Phone: +1 206 317 1218
and [email protected]) from the accounts departement..
I was able to reach them a few more times and they would “correct” the study – which obviously is not possible. I feel totally scammed – lesson learned I would say but I certainly also hope not more people get fooled by them.
I also hope that typing their name leads them to this site where they can read our stories.
Kind regards,
Qyresearch and the variations of are template fillers, no more. There is no useful information in their reports because there is so much garbage mixed in with it therefore you know as soon as you look at a few pages of it you have been suckered. Companies who associate with them are therefore joining in with the criminality, because thats what it is. The Chinese Police services should take them out.
I was just contacted by one of these researchers from Transperancy requesting information and something seemed odd about his line of questioning. Thank you for this article and subsequent posts. I learned something important before finishing my first cup of coffee and saved myself some valuable time.
add Zion Market Research into the list of mass production of low quality reports. It is just a crap & nothing else. They don’t even know how to do the research. It seems like they are doing only copy pasting work.
As an aggregator of market research we are often tasked with helping clients determine what is “good” research and what is “fake.” I have written extensively on this topic (crisis) and would be grateful for any insight, as opposed to the report by report basis on which we help clients make these expensive business decisions. Too often we have heard, “well there is nothing else” or “good enough, is good enough”
In this marketplace what is “good enough?” Is it history, knowledge of the market, methodology?
I welcome an open discussion on this topic. Much Thanks
Hi Rob,
I’ve read your piece “MarketResearch.com’s Shifting Role: From Aggregator to Arbiter” (https://blog.marketresearch.com/marketresearch.coms-shifting-role-from-aggregator-to-arbiter). I think you are trying to present MarketResearch.com as a some kind of clearing house, a stamp certifying “good research”, a feeble attempt to whitewash tainted goods.
I absolutely agree this part of your post:
“But then something happened post-2012 when becoming a “publisher” became as easy as printing a PDF document. Confusion reigned as users and consumers across the planet who had relied on industry research as a trustworthy, top-of-the-information-food-chain partner now wondered where their data was coming from?”
IMHO trustworthiness of entire market research industry has been has destroyed systematically since 2012. You are asking rhetoric questions: “In this marketplace what is “good enough?” Is it history, knowledge of the market, methodology?” The reality is much simpler – most of market research report are outright scam produced in Pune by ignorant college graduates or students. In the face of cutthroat competition and massive fake production even established publishers dropped the quality guidelines and stepped up production of worthless quickies. The market research industry is compromised, probably beyond repair.
Sorry you feel that way, we are trying to determine some independent way to determine good research. I can’t tell you the number of clients who take a report from a publisher that’s inferior and they tell us it worked wonderfully and then another client will say the report was rubbish. We’d like to be part of the solution.
How will you comment this?
“MarketResearch.com is pleased to announce the addition of a new publisher, QYResearch, allowing MarketResearch.com the ability to market and distribute QYResearch’s latest research reports.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/marketresearchcom-announces-distribution-of-reports-by-qyresearch-group-300000685.html”
“every one of QYR’s 120,000 plus reports are 100% fake and worthless”
Trying to decipher Mr. Grander’s comment ‘Too often we have heard, “well there is nothing else” or “good enough, is good enough”’
Is he is implying that marketresearch.com sells QY reports because it’s “good enough” (what does that mean in the context of their “research” being fabricated?) or there is “nothing else” (QY have offerings nobody else does?)?
What that is implying is an analogy like “we know they are pirates and they are fencing stolen goods, but they are the only ones that have those particular goods, and people want them, so we will sell their stolen goods for them!
WASHINGTON and NEW YORK and LONDON, Nov. 25, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — As the leading distributor of market intelligence, MarketResearch.com is pleased to announce the addition of a new publisher, QYResearch, allowing MarketResearch.com the ability to market and distribute QYResearch’s latest research reports.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/marketresearchcom-announces-distribution-of-reports-by-qyresearch-group-300000685.html
QYResearch is one of the classics here, and sadly the company I work for was daft enough to pay 4500 Euro for a report that I then got my hands and on and reviewed as an expert in that particular field. I have been shredding QYR on all social media places I can find them. I even got them to refund me a portion, just 40% which is not enough for me, as I explained to them. Anyway on closer examination I conclude these companies are template filling no more. But behind them is sophisticated website management and tools. Anyway be sure every one of QYR’s 120,000 plus reports are 100% fake and worthless and of course make me 100% cynical about all marketeer sites as consequence although I am sure their maybe some legit ones. This one is clearly Chinese but they have fake addresses and offices in the main economy countries so e.g. in the USA it ought to be possible surely to get them out. They need dealing with, this is a global scam but also break the engine which provides such tools which I believe is American. 100%, do not buy one.
I own Core Consultants (www.coreconsultantsgroup.com), a niche commodity market research firm which I founded in 2009. We are one year older than Transparency Market Research was founded. I can tell you, it’s so hard to have so many titles and keep up the marketing and distribution. We’ve kept our reports at 3 subscription report titles and have spent the last five years trying to get this figure to scale to 6. And only now in the next year or two we’ll be able to get there. Quality research is time consuming, you have to also build the trust and credibility with industry market participants else no one will tell you anything and your research will be garbage. I’ve personally had to give more than 50 key note addresses around the world to build up credibility in my field of research before anyone would disclose anything to Core Consultants. No way can TMR do all of those titles properly in 8 years unless they have a team of over 100 qualified analysts. Not sure if they do?
Lara, the likes of QYResearch has churned out more than 120,000 ”reports” with a team of 20 or so idiots (rich idiots I assume) from the scam centre in Shanghai. I sent all my evidence to the FBI via the website, as QYR has address/phone in the USA. Its cyber-robbery so maybe its hard to deal with. But it sucks. It doesn’t help that the likes of LINKEDIN does not police their own site, nor youtube, twitter where these people feed.
Hello Lara,
Happen to read your comments.
I work with TMR for last 3 years. I would like you to visit our organization once based in Pune, India with over 600 qualified analysts to see how things work before posting unethical comments on the open forum. I believe in freedom of speech, however it should be in lined with actual facts.
I have worked in ine such company for almost 8 months. This company hired 5of us by campus placement and told us that its a consulting firm based in US and we do in depth research on the topics. But when we joined this company, it was just a piece of crap and we were forced to write articles on various topics without any solid research. There was a time when I had to write more than 10 articles in a day. These companies does not take more than 2 weeks in writing a report and there is no solid back end research. Most of these reports are based on assumptions and data availble on Google that also most of the times is from other market research company. Within 2 months of joining I decided to quit my job but I was unable to find a new job as it is very difficult to get a new job if you are leaving your current organization within 2 months. But finally after 8 months out of frustation I quit without having any other job in my hand. But I will say these companies not only cheat clients but they are also cheating on new college graduates.
I absolutely agree. I was in the same situation, though i’m grateful they gave me my first job ever which later landed me a job in Deloitte but then it’ll always be a blot on my resume.
Not only are they all in India, they are all on one city, Pune. By my last count there are about 2 dozen market research firms in Pune and another 6 or so re-sellers. My guess is that there is only one source for these reports and they just keep creating new front firms as a marketing strategy. What is surprising to me is why anyone would buy one of their reports after reading their marketing content. It’s just a string of b-school phrases and poorly written at that.
Steve
and they have equivalent companies in China make no mistake. I think they both subscribe to the same web engine tools, that manage the marketing of this crap. I noted the Indian one had the same index of content as the Chinese one we purchased (not me but, erm a senior manager). I rang the Indian one and told him their report was BS and he denied it and tried to negotiate me buy it at special price to see for myself how good … but since the content IS the same from the index in the public domain of course there is no need. I explained I would pay 1$ and review it for him for free … of course he finally declined my offer and send me nothing. The Chinese one all 186 pages = pure bollocks
Technavio is definitely a fake research company. We recently bought a report and it was piece of crap. The report lacks substance and the entire report was junk. Word of caution never buy any report from then. The analyst was clueless and when we spoke on phone, I got to know that all analysts are based in India and they do a report in a week. How can anyone write a report in just a week and for that they charged $3000.
The research papers they come out with are comical they are so bad. We just recently bought one, only to find random facts with no insights. You can also find identical copy & paste jobs they have included in the same report to make it seem longer. Along with false statements.
These companies should top the list of fake market research publishers:
ResearchAndMarkets
ReportLinker
ReportBuyer
ResearchNReports
The first three you mention, ResearchAndMarkets, ReportLinker, and ReportBuyer are resellers and not publishers of research (note the last two are owned by the same parent company). Therefore, they sell both legitimate publisher’s offering as well as bogus ones in some cases.
I have been following the Pune explosion for a year or so. I have even had some communications with the ownership of one of these firms. While they are a current problem I do not believe they will last long. They have no understanding of the market research market – who are the buyers and more important, why they buy. If you look at their current offerings they are not targeting the supply side, or even the demand side for all of the products and services they claim to cover. They are targeting the unsophisticated private investor. The personal stock picker. I have been in the market research business for 35 year and this had never been a very high priority market. From my contact with the ownership with one of these firms I know that they are finding the market research business not as profitable as they expected, if all all for them.
While I have had some cases where proposal approval was delayed while the prospect went through the process of buying one of these reports and then find that they had no value for them, it the end it raised their appreciation of the breath and depth of the core competencies of established firms.
I would certainly add QY to this list.
Mike, did you buy one of these reports? If so you have reviewed it?
These companies have taken a leaf out the game that was started by the likes of Datamonitor, Wright’s Research, to name a few.
These companies continue to produce very generic, expensive reports.