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
Let us address the elephant in the room. The market research as we knew it is dead. The future is AI-powered market research.
Hello. I’m hoping someone can comment on Euromonitor & Marketline. Has anyone had experience with these companies? Please share detail on if you think they are fraudulant.
Thank you,
Khanh To
So many of these reports are now just fictitious. I have spoken to people selling these reports and they haven’t done any real research, I’ve seen them over-inflate market opportunity by 20-30X , the trouble is one of them puts out these made up numbers and the others use similar numbers in their reports
The amount of time I’ve seen these reports cited and I just can’t believe how gullible we all are
Hello. I’m hoping someone can comment on 99 Strategy and Report Prime. I purchased a report from Report Prime, and it was delivered to me from 99 Strategy, which I thought was strange. Has anyone had experience with these companies? Please share detail on if you think they are fraudulant.
Thank you,
Bethany
I can 100% state without fear of contradiction that Report Prime is a fake India based market research company. Exact same format as the rest of the charlatans. The other company is a fake Chinese arm probably to access that market or they are in league with one of their fraudulent counterparts like QY Research.
What do you guys think about Dezan Shira & Associates (https://dezshira.com)? These guys provide business and market intelligence services, focusing on Asia.
We sampled their report once. It was very basic and without any depth (i.e., quick and simple Google searches would provide pretty much similar information). They also have numerous industry focuses, and I highly doubt they have enough specialists to cover those properly. Have any of you engaged with them and been satisfied with their work?
Has anyone worked with Global Market Insights? Did you have a good or bad experience? Everyone is correct in saying that working with these companies is tempting. We have a small company and the likes of Forrester, IDC, and Gartner don’t return our emails or request for service. If we want data, I feel like this pushes us to hire one of these new companies. For the person who “needs to give a report to the CEO on market size, competition, and desired product features”, what do you suggest?
Global Market Insights is a huge pile of worthless junk reports. Probably your enquiries are out of the scope of Forrester, IDC, and Gartner which are mostly IT-focused. This attitude – “needs to give a report to the CEO on market size, competition, and desired product features” – is what feeds fake market research industry. You badly want to be deceived and there is no shortage of junk market research companies ready to please and oblige you by providing fake data.
Ask yourself – why do you need to know market size? You work in the field and you don’t know competition and desired product features? Make your own research.
If you are interested in an advanced tech area use these companies
futuremarketsinc.com
idetechex.com
Or maybe Smithers at a push
From our own researches Gartner, Forrester etc aren’t interested in any commission sub £15k and are very uncomfortable outside their comfort zone. Most other smaller consultancies focus on niche areas and are lost in the SEO abyss created by the Pune based companies
Unable to reply to the comment thread below – so starting a new one. Sorry Peter – clearly I’m picking your brain.
My takeaway is that “most” market research reports are crap. Small firms can participate, but will have to fight a SEO war or independently pursue clients as a consultancy firm – both make it very challenging to live. Basically – “traditional” market reports are dead.
If I was a marketer who had one week to give my CEO a presentation on some kind of product or market – I’d be tempted to buy one of these junk reports, snip a chart from the report, slap a citation on a slide, and think I just dodged a bullet.
Clearly one of the underlying issues that’s fueling this massive scam is the “need” for the scam itself. Clearly customers of the scammers feel that they need the reports. So how do help them understand that they don’t need these garbage reports in the first place? How do you get a room of marketers to laugh about how “in the old days people would pay +$4K for a garbage market report just to say there’s a market to sell into…what losers!”.
It sounds like marketers, entrepreneurs, investors, execs, need to be re-educated that a market size doesn’t matter – its about how many customer you can get, how much you can charge, how quickly you can act, and ultimately is someone else out there already doing it (if so how are they doing).
First of all, about motivation for buying market research reports – you got it absolutely right : “If I was a marketer who had one week to give my CEO a presentation on some kind of product or market – I’d be tempted to buy one of these junk reports, snip a chart from the report, slap a citation on a slide, and think I just dodged a bullet. Clearly one of the underlying issues that’s fueling this massive scam is the “need” for the scam itself.” It’s a kind of essay cheating mentality in school.
I believe the majority of research end users have already re-educated themselves. The market has changed: Big Tech companies increasingly go trial and error without market research in traditional sense without fear of cannibalizing their own product lines, The market size & CAGR model is compromised beyond salvation. The small market research boutiques are dead. Fake report factories will go on for some time preying on a few idiots falling for deceptively easy way to look smart. Production costs of fake report factories are low, they spend heavily on SEO. New entrants armed with ChatGPT they will flood Google with their spam but there is no market anymore but a few occasional sales. High-end market research companies are already consulting companies Gartner, Forrester Big Four, that’s where the big money.
Yes absolutely true…I have worked in companies like transparency market insights, coherent market insights, and others. They are just making a report in one day…imagine how are they doing it. They are just copy pasting the content from Google and now a days from chat gpt. No analysis is done and no primary interviews. Also they mention in their report that they have talked to various experts but they don’t. It’s totally a fraud industry and I am still working in these companies and going into depression day by day ……they are making us work like slaves for 14 to 16 hours daily. If any request comes for a report we have to work day and night just to copy paste and complete it in one day. It does not matter what content is included for them ..do you have any suggetion what should I do…my career is gone totally
Rahul – I appreciate you giving us an inside look at these companies. I met with Global Market Insights including the person assigned as the researcher, her boss, and the business development manager. I asked a lot of tough questions because of the comments in this forum saying these firms are fraudulent. Their responses were that they conduct primary research including consumer quantitative surveys and industry interviews.. When I asked for a sample of the discussion guide, they sent me a document that included questions and answers from interviews. I will say that the conversations in the document were very simple and could easily have been made up. Are you saying that even when these companies meet with you, and tell you they are doing it the right way, they are actually lying and totally fabricating data? I can see the management lying but I started to get convinced that there is some legitimacy because the researcher used the right language that a researcher would use when explaining the research process. Any more insights you can provide are appreciated.
Hi Tim, the responses that they give in the primary research are totally made up. They don’t conduct primary interviews. Even I used to do this to convince the client that we have done primaries and validated the observations.
Speaking about the managers they are used to handle many clients. So they know how to fool you.
Hi Rahul – thanks for the info. I appreciate your transparency. It’s really disappointing to hear they are faking the primary research. Are the market forecasts / market size totally fake too?
I have a client who would like to use one of the reports generated by Grand View Research. On paper, they seem like a legitimate MR firm with a San Francisco address, but they also have a Pune address.
Has anyone here had any experience with this company? Interested in the degree to which their reports can be trusted.
Trusted? You must be kidding. From the website of Grand View Research: “The company provides syndicated research reports”. This is an euphemism for junk reports. Just another spam factory.
I would suggest engaging with independent researchers for specific studies. They are more reliable and can support you on multiple fronts.
I appreciate the thought – we are a primary research firm and have been for 22 years based in Orange County, CA. and are capable of performing market sizing efforts such as those referenced here. US and EU countries are relatively straightforward, but when you venture out further into APAC and LATAMEA, information typically utilized to understand regulatory environments, reimbursement, and even disease state prevalence are harder to come by, so it gets challenging to make solid projections.
My initial thought was to insist on receiving transcripts from any IDIs they conducted and ensure all sources for referenced values are noted. Our initial plan was to cross check as much of the data as possible, and potentially field a discrete choice analysis in particular countries to show how decision making is influenced by product features and price. If anyone knows of a reputable research company selling secondary research reports for respiratory products (both hospital and HME), I would be interested.
It is difficult for a large dental products company for example, to decide to invest millions of dollars into a OUS market without some basic understanding of market size. While I appreciate comments made earlier regarding the questionable need for market sizing research, a CEO needs data to justify their decisions, let alone upper middle management.
From personal experience any company peddling generic tables of contents are to be ignored. Apart from the large consultancies who general won’t take on commissioned work on a small scale the most respected are UK based companies Future Markets, Inc,, and Idtechex. They have in depth ToCs and provide non generic sample content. Future Markets is very reasonably priced, and not to be confused with a Indian boiler room Future Market Insights.
Many in this group have them on the Fake list. My personal experience is:
– Pune, India
– say headquartered in San Francisco – virtual space office
– wide research: tissue engineering + food + CBD + alumina ++++
– had suspicious calls w/ in 2018 & 2016; once they didn’t answer by “Grand View”, got someone for me and I swear the same guy.
They typically no longer put phone numbers on their site as an easy way to tell they are in India when you call during our workday — I’ve woken people up, many times no answer.
I spoke with a group at Global Market Insights including the 2 researchers for the business area I’m interested in (electric vehicles in powersports (like ATVs, UTVs, dirt bikes, etc) and their business development people. I asked them about their research methodology and they said they take market data from several sources like the American UTV Association, department of tourism, state ATV/UTV associations, etc. They do a correlative analysis of supply and demand to come up with their forecast. Then they do validation through interviews with suppliers and OEMs by connecting with those companies analyst relations teams. They say they are able to get forecasts from the companies as part of their market forecasting and validation process. They also provide a competitive and product analysis (which honestly wouldn’t be too hard to do based on public information on each company’s website). They are clearly from India but also had a professional demeanor and way of speaking about what they do.. Their team has been very responsive and have taken several rounds of my feedback on what I’m looking for and have adjusted their scope of work accordingly. I’m on the fence because the feedback in this forum says that any company fitting their description (from India) is a scam but at the same time, the industry I’m investigating in niche (for now) but has large growth potential given the recent growth in electric passenger vehicles and micro mobility. This industry isn’t like a commodity industry like raw materials or even semiconductors or PCs where there are dedicated analysts that could spend their whole careers study one industry. My guess is that their analysis is quick and dirty compared to big research firms like Gartner/Forrester or even small firms/independents that study more established industries. That said, I think it might be the only thing available. Perhaps if you know what you’re getting going into it, maybe it’s worth buying so we have a starting point for assessing the industry. What does this group think about this? Does it seem like a reasonable first step for assessing this market rather than having nothing to start with?
“Perhaps if you know what you’re getting going into it, maybe it’s worth buying so we have a starting point for assessing the industry. What does this group think about this? Does it seem like a reasonable first step for assessing this market rather than having nothing to start with?”
That was my thinking; what you describe is what I have found to be the case in terms of how they came to their conclusions regarding TAM and estimates for revenue and unit volume. If it is research done purposefully with the information available, it should be a reasonable starting point. My fear as you mentioned, is that if it is all made up, then it really would be worth zero. I have to believe that some of them are making an effort to deliver market intelligence of its kind in a vacuum, right next to another group who just throw darts for numbers.
Ask them for a detailed table of contents listing all the companies they would be profiling. They will be unable to provide you with anything other than the most generic template. It will be a waste of your time and money and you would be better placed spending the time trawling for information yourself. Everything the Pune based boiler ops produce is worthless junk, I have read several of their publications and they are clearly churned out in days with zero understanding of any market. This is their whole business model, which is secondary to the SEO. Most reputable agencies would turn you down for very niche markets, they will claim they can cover any industry
Hi David,
They gave me the list below as part of the Table of Contents. I searched these companies and they all have electric vehicles on the market. I told them I was surprised not to see players like Honda, Can-Am, and Yamaha. They said that while these are major players in the off-road market, they don’t have electric models on the market yet. I double checked that and it seems to be true. GMI said they would include these companies in the report based on information they have shared about future plans to release electric models. Based on my research, I know these companies have made announcements about products in this space but they haven’t launched yet. Based on my interaction with them so far, they seem to be responsive to my requests. They gave a full table of contents that reflects that data I asked for. I suppose the only question will be is if they follow through with reasonably good data on those items or if everything they’ve told me is a well constructed lie and they will just make up data that isn’t real. Based on this info so you still think this company is trash? They have said enough things right that it seems they have done at least a fair amount of work in this market. Maybe they aren’t as good as Gartner or Forrester but they come across as somewhat convincing. Thoughts?
Chapter 8. Company Profiles
8.1. Alke
8.2. Daymak, Inc.
8.3. DRR USA
8.4. Eco Charger
8.5. Hisun Motors
8.6. Intimidator UTV 8.7. Polaris
8.8. TRACKER OFF ROAD 8.9. Zero Motorcycle 8.10. Volcon
Regardless of what information they gave you they are a boiler room scam of epic proportions just like the rest. Same templates, same generic ToCs, publish 2000 reports per month from pet wearables to tax management software. Based in India. No proper consultancy would sully themselves with this range. They’ll take your money and spend 3/4 days copy and pasting press releases and inventing figures. If they can’t accurately talk about the market over the phone or give you a lead in time of 6 weeks to actually produce some work then they are a scam. Proper consultancies don’t “customise” their work because they’ve already heavily researched the market and know what they end users want.
Here’s an idea…take your request and put it into ChatGPT. If the answer comes back looking anything similar to the the sample report, that report is a waste of your money.
My question is why are market reports so non-transparent with their calculations? Although some industries have thousands of companies, it would certainly be possible to provide a detailed breakdown of how each year-to-year market size was calculated as well as the CAGR. Make it a spreadsheet what people can download. Am I thinking about this incorrectly? Just seems odd to me how there are no proof of calculations in these overly priced reports.
Because most of these numbers are produced from the thin air.
So how does a small market research firm that specializes in market sizing and forecast get known in the sea of fake reports.
This market is compromised beyond salvation.
I’d love for this question by Steve to be considered – sounds like transparency, specialization in a specific market (not 100k reports), and honesty that not every market is growing at a 20% CAGR.
Also, why the paywall? Would people pay for something that is being updated each quarter? Sounds like with so much garbage out there a small firm could start taking market share by just offering market data in a different way (not a pdf template).
A small market research firm producing quality research can’t survive the current market flooded with fake reports. This a cruel and sad reality. The market is compromised and customers are suspicious. Any new original title will be mercilessly duplicated with thousands of surrogate titles. A small company can produce about a dozen reports annually and can’t sell enough copies to survive. I know what I’m talking about, have been through this.
Sounds like you’ve been down this road, and I’ll certainly take that advice. Basically even if you did create an original report these firms will just steal it and resell it?
Not to bring up the past, but I’d love to learn more about your experience. I guess I’m just hung up on the fact that this industry is so broken – I mean, that has to be an opportunity for change? Right?
Maybe a small research company shouldn’t even be focused on “market size” and “CAGR” – clearly that doesn’t matter. For example, why not just take a product, calculate the revenues of public companies selling that product, maybe do a headcount estimate for the private companies selling that product, and just end it there? Screw the “market size”, here’s how much money companies are making in this space, and here’s the calculation – stay tuned and I’ll update it next quarter.
I just feel like something like that could actually sell, at a far lower price point, but support a small firm (1-5 people max). Maybe I have no clue.
Exactly. I work with my client on very specific objectives.
They are not at all interested in growth rate. They are more interested in understanding the competition, areas of growth, industry performance and benchmark for their own business.
That 100 tables in a report is crap.
Such reports cover almost 40% unwanted data.
It’s not that they will steal your original report. They will derive enough from your report’s title and ToC to duplicate and concoct some inferior improvisation. These fake market research companies are playing SEO (search engine optimization) game. In a short time your original report will compete against hundreds of similar titles from fake report publishers. Your potential customers have no idea that your report is original, your title is lost in hundreds of similar google search results. Let us assume your report is getting some interest from potential customers, customers want to know more details before buying it. They have burnt before and they are suspicious. You are, from other side, not sure whether those making enquiry are customers or competitors trying to fish out report details which also happens a lot. Some customers try to fish out sone specific numbers without buying report. All of the above makes probability of sale a rare event.
I agree that “market size” and “CAGR” are obsolete concepts in the context of market report. Big Tech moved past these “market size” and “CAGR” years ago. Yet customers who pay for the report somehow expect neat rows and columns of numbers and fake market sweatshops deliver neat table and graphs of fake numbers.
The market is badly broken and I don’t see any model to fix it for small market research boutique.
Add ReportsandData to the list.
I’ve gotten quite proficient at sniffing these out and the ‘go-to’ at my company when somebody gets an email to buy one.
Here’s my checklist. Note – don’t just do a cursory check – dive one or two layers down to see what pops up.
1. What time are you receiving emails from them? 4AM CT is 3:30PM in Pune…
2. Check the LinkedIn Profile of the emailer. The last guy I checked was in Pune and had worked at 3 of these places. I wonder if they are all the same company that keeps changing names.
3. Check the Website and LinkedIn page of the Company. Check number and types of reports. Check the addresses. Anything with a Pune address is suspect. They’ve gotten more tricky in the US. ReportsandData has an address on Wall Street. Seems legit until you dig just a bit deeper: Virtual office address! https://www.davincivirtual.com/loc/us/new-york/new-york-city-virtual-offices/facility-677
That can all be done in about 10 minutes. Good luck, and be vigilant.
The common denominator is the lack of detail in the table of contents. For sample requests they always send a general template with zero detail
Hi, what about Marquis Market Insights and Zettabyte Analytics? Does anyone have experience with it? Thanks!
Just a scam like the others.
What about Visiongain? Does this company offer good quality studies?
Nope, a bunch of low-paid Indian MBAs working from London’s office. Visiongain used to be a conference organizer company selling low-quality reports to the same audience visiting their events. When I worked as an analyst for one of blue chip market research companies the guys from Visiongain often contacted us pretending to be potential buyers of our reports and asking for preview to steal content. The scum of scum.
Thanks for sharing your opinion. That’s what I also thought….
Thank you for this helpful thread! Id like your opinion on ReAnin. I havent seen them mentioned yet in the comments below.
When I see on their website promotional pitch about 30,000 reports covering 28 verticals, it’s pretty obvious that ReAnin is just another low-grade template report sweatshop. Now armed with ChatGPT the will probably cross into 100,000 reports territory by the end of the week.
any thoughts regarding Coherent market insights ? thank you !
Pune based frauds with fake uk, Japan and USA based addresses. Avoid. If you want to be sure ask for sample content it will be generic template dross
Thank you for all the great personal experience feedback. So with all that said, what are the ‘true and trusted’ market research companies?
These are real market research companies which does not necessarily mean you should believe blindly in any of their or any market forecasts:
Gartner
Forrester
IDC
ABI Research
Nielsen
Big Four: Deloitte, Ernst & Young (EY), KPMG, and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)
Articles in MIT Review, Bloomberg and Economist often provide more insight than market research reports.
Frost is not what used to be. Avoid.
It should be said that the very idea of market research as we knew it a decade ago, neat tables of forecast numbers by market segments, has died. Insights are more important than numbers. Technology moves faster than any forecasts. Big Tech companies do not believe in market research forecasts, they experiment, cannibalize their own products and forge their own markets.
From personal experience the large research firms eg, Gartner produce okay work on hot topics but are generally lacking when it comes to advanced tech areas for off the shelf products. The main reputable companies are British based-Idetechex, future markets, inc (not to be confused with Future Markets Insights, another Indian boiler room operation), Smithers for packaging. Other companies such as cbs insights provide some good info on advanced tech companies and investments. You can tell the decent ones in advanced tech from the detail of their ToCs and the fact they don’t generally provide market data for 45 countries
Great – thank you for the replies and suggestions…now just doing some market research on market research companies…
Yeah finally someone is speaking out loud about this bullshit industry.
I like your quantitative bullshit ‘filter’ (houndreds of reports), but the qualitative one (‘US/EU front-end, India back-end) works equally well and it tends to be even faster.
Seeing a Indian market research that claims it’s US/ Europe-based is a huge red light, I have yet to see one that wasn’t a fraud
You may also check comments section on this article, there are countless cases of these fraudsters.https://ipvm.com/reports/scam-research
I have worked with one such Pune based firms, Allied market research / allied analytics. These guys hire MBA freshers as associates who are in charge of the writeup part. All of this is googled information
After 2 years, these associates are promoted to so called industry “”analysts””. These people are responsible for spitting out those numbers and forecasts based on absolutely zero primary data. All of the number churning is done on the basis of googled data from various sources.
Oh and did I mention that every report is worked on for a total of 2-5 days.
These people have a bigger team of SEO and sales experts compared to their research teams. The result – you are forced down with a pile of these research companies once you google something.
This is a scam industry that is rapidly growing across pune. If you find the location as pune anywhere, consider it as one of these pune based market research firms and dont every buy from them
Dear all,
I am also in the search for a large scale research, and finally got in communication with a company called “Verified Market Research, a registered member of ESOMAR”.
The flags are similar.
All the numbers are US based, but LinkedIn indicates that they are based in India.
All the people I had talked with were from India.
The address indicates originally US, but LinkedIn indicates they are based in Pune – Greater Delhi – Maharastrha INDIA!
Even on a web call, nobody turned on cameras.
From preliminary talks I was reassured that the report would be generated within 4 days!
The sample report was too generic and when I asked for more details on the Markets and the Competitors, it was obvious that some were off target.
Froze the payment process until further verifications are provided.
Should have found this website sooner!
You can also add that these companies have fake US and UK based addresses.
There are only a few reputable firms operating that provide any decent level of consultancy on advanced tech and materials in my experience:
Future Markets, Inc,, Idetechex and some of the larger consultancies such as Frost and Sullivan (although their output is very generic).
BCC Research used to provide decent content but have adopted the Pune-based India model (they used to list analysts who produced the reports but are now just a boiler op with generic ToCs and outdated list of company profiles).
Even previously reputable resellers such as GII in Asia have now let their website become clogged up by garbage from outfits like QY Research.
As far as I know Verified Market Research is not member of ESOMAR.
It is just one more of those scam reports companies.
Does anyone know about Allied Market Research?
Fake market research on industrial scale.
What about Multimarket Insight?
Just another collection of useless fake reports quickly generated with the same template.
I do, it is just like the companies mentioned above, completely fake reports, just like the rest
I bought a report from them on filtration. It had significant errors in a chart. I pointed it out and asked them for a correction. I never heard back. I wouldn’t buy from them.
Thanks, Peter
I thought so, no address or telephone number either.
I have the same bad experience with qyresearch. They offer automated studies based on non validated and bullshit data. They obviously search for buzzwords of a segment and copy it together in something they call study… It is fraud business.
Does anyone have an experience with Market Decipher?
Take a look at the Market Decipher site and you will see that it’s just another typical fake market research company. They cover all with zero knowledge about anything.
I had contacted trouve360reports for a report and later while communicating got to know they sell China based reports with their HQ in US and accounting is handled from India.
This raised a huge red flag to me and when asked for references they just disappeared and never to be head again.
Peter Johnson | Business Manager is the individual who was in contact with me who has no online presence. It clearly looks like a fake person. I could not find any presence of their US address.
These are scammers.
Word of caution about Visiongain. It’s a real company I think, though I would never again…YMMV but look at their content list very carefully before purchase.
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?
Don’t do it. My manager has bought reports from them. They are actually one of the worst in this business.
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…
Dear readers,
Unfortunately, we did not come across these remarks earlier.
We would like to insist that Ceresana is indeed a western company. It was founded in 2002 (well ahead of most Indian competitors) by German economic researcher Oliver Kutsch, and it is still fully owned by him. The company had started with market studies on chemicals – one of its specialties up to the present day. From there it went on to neighboring topics (plastics -> packaging, building materials…).
Ceresana has now clients all over the world, including China and India. But we see no reason to “hide” our origins or leave them. Ceresana is based in one of the main streets of Konstanz, a small European town. You can actually visit us: In Google Street View or any other navigator of your choice head for “Mainaustrasse 34” in 78464 Konstanz.
If you request information about our market reports, we will be happy to send it to you. And sometimes we even have special offers with discounts…
Greetings from Ceresana in Germany!
Ceresana really appreciates your interest in market research – and your outrage about spam.
However, we feel we are being treated unfairly here.
With regard to the remarks made by Patricia Espada (Dec. 2019 ff.) we would like to set the record straight:
Ceresana is not “another sham group” with a Western address, nor does it see any reason to “hide its origins”: Ceresana was founded in 2002 in Germany. Today, it has clients all over the world, including India and China – but up to the present day the company is still headquartered in the heart of Europe (you can actually visit us and talk to our analysts – head for: Mainaustrasse 34 in 78464 Konstanz, Germany).
Ever since its foundation, Ceresana specializes in chemicals and plastics – and related topics, like additives for plastics, packaging made of plastics, or plastics for the automotive sector. Increasingly Ceresana investigates the “green” side of its sectors: bio-chemicals, bio-plastics, bio-packagings etc. In short, Ceresana does not “make many reports on many industries” – but remains firmly rooted in its field of competence.
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.