How's business?

I recently attended the MRA conference in Las Vegas. Great conference by the way – good content and a good variety of attendees. As I ran into people I knew, the common phrase of “how’s business?” frequently came up. This has been standard conversation filler at conferences for years. No one really expects an honest answer and no one ever answers with much more than “fine” or “we’re swamped”.

But this year was different. I could sense that people really wanted to know. And people seemed to be giving reasonably honest answers. Of course no one gave hard figures, but you did hear a lot of ‘it’s slow”, “we could use more business” or “I can’t wait for this year to be over”. There was also a lot of concern about what next year may bring.

One thing was clear. The economic upheaval in the U.S. and across the world has substantially impacted the marketing research industry. Whether business is up, flat or down; everyone seems to be worried about it.

So how’s business?