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February 19, 2020

Read time: 3min

Better information with unified search across all syndicated sources

Market Logic Team

Companies subscribe to a staggering amount of syndicated databases – more than the human brain can wrap itself around on a daily basis. But in the expectation economy, where consumers make cross-industry comparisons every time they contemplate a purchase, insights managers need to grasp more than just their category. A unified search can get everyone up to speed, quickly. Five or so years ago, an insights manager could focus on custom research inside their own business category, supplemented by a few transversal research initiatives across categories on topics like shopper journeys, sustainability, and segmentations to fully understand the consumer, shopper and market. But now, focusing on custom or past research is no longer enough. Customers aren’t just comparing your products and services to your competitors’. They’re comparing you to RedBull’s content, AirBnb’s community, and Amazon’s speed and convenience. That is why companies need to supplement their own research with external sources, from Euromonitor and Mintel to social media listening, economic data and the weather. In 2019, Forrester Research suggests external data use is extending across organizations “A whopping 64% of decision-makers are planning to expand or are expanding their ability to source external data.” Insights managers in the pet care business, for example, need to know what’s going on in their own category but to also understand adjacencies, like Apple Pay, Amazon Prime, and the Dollar Shave Club. With syndicated sources as the main source of market information, a company might subscribe to 30 or more sources – but marketers typically turn to one or two of the sources they are familiar with and ignore the rest. Additionally, syndicated sources can be purchased with a variety of license arrangements – one source might be enterprise-wide, another might be a site license, another might be accessible by named users. In these circumstances, managers are often assigned to monitor, summarize and promote incoming information from their subscriptions to ensure they are responsibly used. One North American beverage company used to ring-fence access to seven syndicated sources within their central insights team, where two managers would field questions and summarize responses to ensure license compliance. With a Market Logic powered insights platform, IPRs are indexed, aggregated and managed for syndicated sources so marketers can enter one search term and get answers from all sources. At a recent Insights Executive Roundtable, Frito-Lay described how people used to have “tons of little post-its on their computer for all their secondary source logins,” and of course would only remember a few. Now, they see the integration of syndicated sources like Euromonitor and Mintel on their insights platform as “a gateway drug to bring marketers to all their research in one place.” The best answers to their questions from across all syndicated sources are presented in one place, saving countless hours and making the most of a valuable investment.