It seems like everywhere I turn the last week or so there is another call from CMOR (The Council for Marketing and Opinion Research) for input to a definition of market research. (Note that if you click the CMOR link it will actually take you to the MRA site, but that’s another story.) On the face of it this doesn’t sound like a bad idea were it not for the fact that not that long ago ESOMAR did the same thing and it became part of the Code of Practice published by ESOMAR and the International Chamber of Commerce. This code, I am told, has been adopted or endorsed by something like 37 industry associations in 32 countries. So why do we need to do this again? In a global industry like ours shouldn’t we be focused on harmonization rather than each of us going our own way?
See this post to get a look at the ESOMAR definition.