At Quirk’s, we’ve heard enough from our readers to know that, despite all the exciting changes happening in the industry (e.g., mobile research, storytelling, neuromarketing, big data, etc.), it isn’t always sunshine and roses. It’s a lot of hard work for sometimes not a lot of recognition – especially from the C-suite.
So it might surprise some of you to hear that from the outside looking in, MR is a thriving industry and you are in a position to be coveted by many! A 2014 article from Yahoo Education that lists five dead-end degrees and five hot degrees to pursue, based on a study from the Georgetown University Center on Education, places marketing research to the winning side. The Georgetown report noted that while the average unemployment rate for all recent college graduates is 7.9 percent, this figure differs significantly from one degree to another.
Yahoo Education combed through the Georgetown Report’s study to identify which degrees to avoid and which might have brighter prospects.
On the dead-end degree list:
- Information systems
- Architecture
- Anthropology
- Film, video and photography arts
- Political science
On the hot list:
- Nursing
- Elementary education
- Finance
- Marketing and marketing research
- Business management and administration
The unemployment rate for marketing and marketing research recent graduates was 6.6 percent, according to the Georgetown study.
One reason that rate is so low? “Every single organization, if they plan to be successful, will have a marketing function,” says Dawn Edmiston, assistant professor of management and marketing at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa.
SiliconIndia also picked up Yahoo’s story and listed “Market Research Analyst” third on its list of five fast-growing professions worth chasing.
Why it’s booming: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, businesses at present rely on complex data to get to know their consumers’ habits. And in doing so, companies are able to find out the right sets of audiences and market directly to their target population. The data might be of no use until and unless the research analyst puts his ideas into it and interprets them.
Career expert Nicole Cook says, “You have a number of software programs that can run data but until you interpret the data, it’s just numbers. … Market research analysts provide the human interpretation part of it. You can have someone fill out a piece of paper without anyone there but you need humans to put the data in layman’s terms.”