Employers

Approximately 681,900 marketing research analysts are employed in the United States. Large corporations, industrial firms, advertising agencies, data collection businesses, and private research organizations that handle local surveys for companies on a contract basis employ marketing research analysts. While many marketing research organizations offer a broad range of services, some firms subcontract parts of an overall project out to specialized companies. For example, one research firm may concentrate on product interviews, while another might focus on measuring the effectiveness of product advertising. Similarly, some marketing analysts specialize in one industry or area. For example, agricultural marketing specialists prepare sales forecasts for food businesses, which use the information in their advertising and sales programs.

Although many smaller firms located all across the country outsource studies to marketing research firms, these research firms, along with most large corporations that employ marketing research analysts, are located in such big cities as New York or Chicago. Many salaried marketing research analysts are employed in private industry, but opportunities also exist in government and academia, as well as at hospitals, public libraries, and a variety of other types of organizations.

Starting Out

Students with a graduate degree in marketing research and experience in quantitative techniques have the best chances of landing top-level jobs as marketing research analysts. Many employees without postgraduate degrees start out as research assistants, trainees, interviewers, or questionnaire editors. In such positions, those aspiring to the job of research analyst can gain valuable experience conducting interviews, analyzing data, and writing reports.

Use your college career services office, the Web, and help wanted sections of local newspapers to look for job leads. Another way to get into the marketing research field is through personal and professional contacts. Names and telephone numbers of potential employers may come from professors, friends, or relatives. Students who have participated in internships or have held marketing research-related jobs on a part-time basis while in school or during the summer may be able to obtain employment at these firms or at similar organizations.

Most marketing research professionals begin as junior analysts or research assistants. In these positions, they help in preparing questionnaires and related materials, training survey interviewers, and tabulating and coding survey results. After gaining sufficient experience in these and other aspects of research project development, employees are often assigned their own research projects, which usually involve supervisory and planning responsibilities. A typical promotion path for those climbing the company ladder might be from assistant researcher to marketing research analyst to assistant manager and then to manager of a branch office for a large private research firm. From there, some professionals become market research executives or research directors for industrial or business firms.

Since marketing research analysts learn about all aspects of marketing on the job, some advance by moving to positions in other departments, such as advertising or sales. Depending on the interests and experience of marketing professionals, other areas of employment to which they can advance include data processing, teaching at the university level, statistics, economics, and industrial research and development.

In general, few employees go from starting positions to executive jobs at one company. Advancement often requires changing employers. Therefore, marketing research analysts who want to move up the ranks frequently go from one company to another, sometimes many times during their careers.

Get a part-time or summer job doing statistical research with your local government or a marketing research firm.

Visit the following Web sites for job listings:

• https://jobs.ama.org
• http://jobs.marketingresearch.org
• https://jobs.aapor.org
• https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/market-research-jobs
• https://www.quirks.com/jobs

To learn more about the field, read articles that are posted on these Web sites:

• Quirk's Media: (https://www.quirks.com/articles) 
• QRCA VIEWS (https://qrcaviews.org)
• Journal of Marketing (https://www.ama.org/journal-of-marketing)

Visit http://www.marketingresearch.org/career-guide to read the Insights Association's "Career Guide to the Survey, Opinion & Marketing Research Industry."