Integrity Matters
If much of your top line is dependent on getting tech companies to sponsor your research reports, you’ve got quite an incentive to design questionnaires that will yield the kind of reports tech vendors will want to sponsor.
- "Vendors Still Paying for IT Research that Flatters Them," The Wall Street Journal, 1/30/2008
Unsavory things are known to happen in certain corridors of IT market research. Solution providers that sponsor a report may be allowed to influence the research findings to their advantage. Industry practitioners may be given the false impression that they must complete a survey (unknowingly becoming a "lead" in the process) in order to access a report. Research analysts may masquerade as objective thought leaders when, in fact, they carry million-dollar sales quotas and are compensated based on their ability to monetize their work. This means that their primary motivation is not to produce quality research, but, rather, to produce marketing content that meets with the approval of the "featured underwriters." Meanwhile, sales reps, desperate to sell sponsorship slots that cost as much as a new car, may resort to using "used car salesmen tactics" in their overly-zealous efforts to close the next deal.
At Gleanster, we don't allow solution providers to stick their logos on the covers of our reports. No vendor sponsors means no conflicts of interest. Our research analysts operate as impartial third parties, charged with benchmarking best practices, not "soft selling" sponsorship slots. We also don't mislead busy executives who vounteer to take our surveys or, for that matter, inundate them with spam after the fact. In short, we refuse to participate in the deceptive business practices and high pressure selling methods that others may embrace as business-as-usual.
Gleanster is committed to a research methodology and business model that caters to the individual needs and preferences of our community members. This model democratizes vendor participation—solution providers of all sizes can partner with us to raise brand visibility, gain introductions to new client prospects and tap our strategic guidance—and mitigates analyst bias. At Gleanster, we know that our growing reputation and future success hinges on our ability to be completely honest and impartial with respect to our research activities while being fair, transparent and responsive in all of our customer interactions and business dealings.
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