Since the establishment of the China Social Survey Institute in 1987, China’s research and survey industry has gone through nearly 30 years. Due to a lack of successful experiences and cases in large-scale research, apart from one or two larger survey firms, most research companies have relatively low influence and visibility. The overall research industry in China remains at a relatively low level. Based on the nature of their operators, China’s market research institutions can be divided into four types: private institutions, government-sponsored institutions, joint venture institutions, and those established by academic research or news organizations. According to data from the CMRA website, among these four types, private institutions account for about 80% of the total number of practicing institutions nationwide, government-sponsored institutions make up 14%, academic research and news organizations 5%, and joint ventures 1%.
Currently, the industrial chain of China’s research and survey industry is gradually maturing and becoming more complete. According to estimates by the Market Research Association, among the over 3,000 research companies nationwide, 400–500 have reached a certain scale, with around 60 being relatively large in size. Research companies and survey execution companies are upstream and downstream participants in the industry chain. The main business of research companies comes from clients, while that of survey execution companies primarily comes from upstream research firms. In a complete research project, the main tasks of research companies include communicating with clients, project design, outsourcing project execution, data analysis, report writing, and presentation, whereas survey execution companies are responsible for carrying out the assigned fieldwork to collect the market data required by the research companies.
Development scale, structure, and market segmentation of China's research and consulting industry