Indicator Pesquisa de Mercado, a Brazilian market research company, announced late last month that it was joining Harris Interactive’s Global Network.
Harris Interactive, best known for its Harris poll, is a global supplier of Internet-based market research. It conducts research in over 80 countries in 30 languages.
Indicator Pesquisa, which will be known as Indicator/Harris Interactive, is Brazil’s fourth largest market research firm. It has branch offices in Argentina and Portugal, covering Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula.
It conducts more than 400 research projects for 300 clients — 186 were added in the last year — and employs 125 people. Projects cover the waterfront from special focus groups to demographic and economic desk research projects.
The company is partners in seven ventures involving video and print communications, management software, brand tracking, the Internet, business simulation, financial market studies and modeling.
Indicator Pesquisa estimates that the market research business in Brazil is worth $250 million a year with ad hoc projects accounting for half that total, continuous projects for 40 percent and public opinion polls for 10 percent.
Given Brazil’s size and demographics — it ranks fifth in terms of territory and population and more than 40 percent of people are under 20, true national studies are difficult to carry out.
Indicator Pesquisa recommends telephone surveys for upscale studies and warns that mail surveys are still “a rare way to conduct research projects in Brazil. Focus groups take longer because Brazilians are very talkative.”
