In the last decade web analytics has grown into a self-contained industry but there has been a limited amount of collaboration with the traditional marketing research industry. Perhaps that is changing now.
Traditional marketing research uses the well known questionnaire or focus groups to arrive at some decision that is used in marketing. It is a well established industry and over US$28,000 million are spent each year on marketing research. Suppliers are present throughout the world. Familiar names include Nielsen, Taylor Nelson Sofres, IMS, Kantar, GFK, Ipsos, Synovate and Arbitron. Full-service agencies provide all research facilities to a client. Smaller entities provide specific services such as consultancy, fieldwork, telephone call centres and computer analysis. Many advertising agencies offer market research. Professional associations represent the interests of suppliers, users and other communities; these include ESOMAR, the MRS, and many more.
On the other hand, the Web Analytics industry has grown from the 1990s when web counters were easily available and visible on web pages. In 1995 log file analysis programmes created, mainly to ensure web pages functioned properly. By 2000 Key vendors based on log file analysis were firmly established: these included Accrue, WebTrends, WestSideStory and Coremetrics. However problems with Log Files were becoming clear... JavaScript Tags emerged as a new standard for collecting data from websites. With tagging a few lines of code are added to each page, when a page loads, these tags cause data to be sent to a data collection server. So work shifted from the IT dept. to a web analysis software vendor and the number of services on offer expanded. Google even gave their services away free of charge.
All companies have web pages, so all companies have a need for web traffic analysis. This means the Web Analytics Industry has grown. It even has a trade and professional body called the Web Analytics Association. http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/
Has traditional research embraced Web Analytics? Well the answer is no, there is a love-hate relationship. Market Researchers are the masters of human relationships and consumer behaviour. Conversely Web Analytics people are masters of the manipulation of massive data sets, they are techie, they work best alone. For the CAM student it is wise to embrace both, because Web Analytics are still hiring, and there are signs that the two industries are coming closer together. To survive in the future you need to understand both traditional market research and web analytics.
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