1.8Industry

Research & Analytics

Firms delivering market research, competitive intelligence, economic analysis, and data analytics to inform business and investment decisions.

8
Segments: 32
Verticals

Overview

Research & Analytics covers the firms that gather, analyze, and sell information and insight — market research and consumer insights, business intelligence and analytics, competitive and economic research, geospatial analytics, ESG data, and survey research. The common asset is proprietary data and the methods to turn it into decisions.

It is a fragmented, data-driven field where the most valuable businesses are built on recurring data subscriptions rather than one-off projects. Demand has grown steadily with the broader appetite for data-driven decision-making, and consolidation is brisk wherever a defensible data asset is in play.

Market snapshot

Market size: ~$34B
Growth: ~5.6%CAGR (2017–22, nominal)
Companies: ~5,534 firms

Firms by employee count

85.5% of firms have fewer than 20 employees: 4,730 micro-businesses, below most mandates.

The investable universe804 firms with 20+ employees

20–99: 50563%
100–499: 18223%
500+: 11715%

Percentages are of the 20+ employee universe. 20–99 and 100–499 are the lower-middle market; 500+ is at scale.

This sizes the commercial research-SERVICES core — market research and economic/social-science research, the two things sold as a service and counted here. The much larger scientific R&D that the word 'research' evokes (pharma, biotech, engineering labs, ~$290B) is mostly in-house corporate spend, and where it is a service it is counted under Healthcare and Industrials, not here. The analytics specialties below (BI, competitive intelligence, ESG, geospatial software, polling) have no dedicated code of their own and are unsized.

NAICS 541720, 541910. U.S. Census Bureau — 2022 Statistics of U.S. Businesses; U.S. Census Bureau — 2022 Economic Census.

Business model & economics

Revenue model

Project research plus recurring data and insights subscriptions

Key economics

Revenue per firm: $6,225,136
Revenue per employee: $240,517
Employees per firm: 23.8
Recurring revenue: Moderate–High where built on subscription data; project-based otherwise
EBITDA margin: 15–30%
Capex intensity: Low

Characteristics

Balanced cost base — payroll is 36% of revenue, leaving room to scale margin without cutting staff
Moderate strategic-buyer pool — 117 firms exceed 500 employees; a scaled asset has buyers, but not many
Proprietary data assets are the durable competitive advantage.
Subscription data and insights produce the most valuable, recurring revenue.
Demand tracks the broad shift to data-driven decision-making.

NAICS 541720, 541910. U.S. Census Bureau — 2022 Statistics of U.S. Businesses; U.S. Census Bureau — 2022 Economic Census.

Geographic concentration

Commercial research is a federal-buyer business, and it shows: Washington, D.C. carries more than ten times its expected share of research firms — economic research for the agencies and think tanks, opinion research for the political class, all clustered at the source. The Northeast corridor (Massachusetts, Connecticut) and Virginia follow. The raw counts still sit in California and New York, but per capita the capital is in a class of its own.

District of ColumbiaMassachusettsConnecticutVirginia

NAICS 541720, 541910. U.S. Census Bureau — 2022 Statistics of U.S. Businesses (firms by state). Concentration shown by location quotient.

M&A deal context

Deal activityHigh

Who’s acquiring

Data & information-services consolidators
PE-backed research and analytics platforms
Strategics acquiring proprietary datasets

What’s driving deals

Acquirers chasing defensible, recurring data assets.
Consolidation across market research, data, and analytics.
Demand for data-driven insight across industries.

Segments in this industry

Find Research & Analytics acquisition targets

Search Acquisera’s index for companies classified under Research & Analytics (1.8) and build a targeted deal pipeline.

Search companies