Market Research Society (MRS) — UK

It is the professional body's own map of its industry, captured as two record families.

The first is the Research Buyers Guide, which MRS positions as the only source of accredited research suppliers in the UK and Ireland. Each entry is a research company or a viewing facility carrying a trading name, a listing type, sector specialism tags across ten verticals - Arts and Leisure, Automotive and Travel, Energy, Finance, FMCG and Retail, Healthcare, Media, Public and Charities, Technology and Telecoms - plus three flags: MRS accreditation, CEO Inclusion Pledge signatory status, and whether the organisation offers work placements.

The second is the industry size series: MRS's own estimate that the UK research, insight and analytics industry is worth approaching £10 billion sterling and employs at least 75,000 workers across more than 4,000 enterprises. The estimate is built from ONS Annual Business Survey figures under SIC code 732 (market research and opinion polling, c. £6.0bn) and SIC code 722 (R&D in social sciences and humanities, c. £0.7bn) for calendar 2024, updated May 2026, then pro-rated using the MRS Annual League Tables in which the top 100 firms returned £5.44 billion turnover in 2024. The wider 'Business of Evidence' market, which adds adjacent evidence functions, is estimated at £18.7 billion.

Five of the headline industry aggregates exactly as they arrive, each carrying its stated basis so you can quote the number and defend the method:

# UK research industry aggregates -- one row per headline metric
metric       : UK research, insight & analytics industry value
figure       : ~£10bn
basis        : ONS ABS SIC 732 (~£6.0bn) + SIC 722 (~£0.7bn) pro-rated
              using MRS Top-100 League Tables

metric       : Top 100 firms turnover (2024)
figure       : £5.44bn
basis        : MRS Annual League Tables compiled from annual reports,
              Companies House returns and trade press

metric       : Sector employment
figure       : ~75,000 workers (c.52,000 full-time, c.23,000 part-time)
basis        : Business Register and Employment Survey population estimates
              pro-rated beyond SIC 732/722

metric       : Wider Business of Evidence market
figure       : £18.7bn
basis        : MRS Business of Evidence report

Read the basis column as the load-bearing part. The £10bn headline is not a survey response - it is ONS ABS turnover under two SIC codes, pro-rated upward using the league table returns of the top 100 firms. That construction matters when a client deck needs to say where the number came from. Directory records follow the same discipline: every supplier row arrives with its listing type, specialism tags and accreditation flags as typed values rather than free text scraped off a profile page. Get a sample of this dataset

Eight fields carry the core. company_name identifies the supplier; listing_type splits research companies from viewing facilities; sector_specialism tags the ten verticals MRS uses; accreditation_status, inclusion_pledge_signatory and work_placement_offered are the three boolean flags the guide publishes per organisation. On the aggregate side, sic_code_732_turnover and sic_code_722_turnover hold the ONS-derived building blocks behind the £10bn estimate.

Everything else - the wider Business of Evidence sizing, employment split between c.52,000 full-time and c.23,000 part-time workers, enterprise counts by register source, and the top-100 firm roster - rides under additional fields on request rather than padding every row.

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Geographic: United Kingdom and Ireland - the scope within which MRS accredits suppliers. The Buyers Guide also lists agencies from further afield, so non-UK entries exist but sit outside the accreditation perimeter.

Temporal: rolling current directory content alongside point-in-time industry statistics. The latest size estimates were updated May 2026 and cover calendar 2024. One caveat travels with the numbers: MRS states its ONS ABS-based sizing is not a time series, so year-on-year comparisons should be treated with care.

Granularity: two levels - company-level directory entries, one row per accredited supplier or viewing facility, and annual national-level industry aggregates, one row per headline metric with its basis.

API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.

Directory extracts cut cleanly against any filter combination - pick the sector specialisms, require accreditation, exclude viewing facilities - and arrive keyed on company_name. Industry aggregates ship with their basis columns intact, so the £5.44bn league-table figure and the ONS ABS components stay separable downstream instead of collapsing into one unsourced number.

Vendor selection with teeth. Procurement teams shortlist agencies by specialism tag and accreditation flag instead of trawling a search interface entry by entry; the inclusion pledge and work placement flags support supplier diversity and ESG questions that now appear in RFPs.

Market sizing that survives scrutiny. Consultants and strategy teams anchor TAM models for research tooling and insights platforms on the £10bn industry value and the £18.7bn Business of Evidence framing, quoting the ONS ABS basis rather than an unattributed round-up figure.

Competitive mapping. The directory doubles as a census of the agency landscape - who operates in Healthcare versus Finance specialisms, which viewing facilities serve qualitative fieldwork - useful for positioning maps and partner searches.

Recruiting and business development. Work-placement flags identify organisations running early-career programmes; the company list itself is a prospecting frame for vendors selling into research operations.

Market Researchers & Consultants get the direct hit: this is their trade association's census of who does the work and how big the work is, usable in client deliverables without re-derivation.

Sales & Go-To-Market Teams treat the accredited supplier list as a clean target account universe for insights-tech products - accreditation acts as a quality pre-filter that generic company databases cannot replicate.

Investors & Quants use the industry size series to benchmark the revenue base of listed insights platforms and martech vendors against the market they sell into.

Recruiters & HR Teams read the work-placement and inclusion pledge flags as signals of employer programme maturity across the sector.

Three things. First, the directory count is large but not published as a single number anywhere - we state coverage in rows delivered, not in marketing adjectives, so your sample includes the exact count for whatever filter set you name.

Second, the industry size figures are estimates constructed from official sources, not official statistics themselves. MRS derives them from ONS Annual Business Survey sampling and explicitly notes the result is not a time series. We deliver the basis columns so that caveat travels with every number instead of getting lost in a slide.

Third, the delivered universe is the supplier listings and industry statistics described on this page; MRS's separate member and Company Partner areas sit outside it. Name the filters - specialisms, accreditation requirement, geography - and the sample arrives cut to them.