And Now We Have Nonsense Research On “Procurement Market Intelligence”

September 26, 2019 by Dave Haynes

Following the search term “digital signage” on Google Alerts means getting a daily email with headlines and links to endless forecasts from Indian research factories about the state and prospects for the industry. I ignore them because they’re almost all nonsense – data borrowed or dreamed up by analysts who the next day will be generating equally-nonsensical reports about circuit breakers or insulin syringes.

Unfortunately, this stuff sometimes gets treated as legit by members of the trade press who are more into copying and pasting than thinking, and I often see forecasts cited in presentation decks that try to put a value to aspects of the industry.

Now there is at least one company doing something called “procurement market intelligence ” on the digital signage industry (and seemingly anything else that smells like an industry).

My inbox this morning had word of “Despite Strong Market Growth, Buyers are Struggling to Keep Up with the Increasing Procurement Price of Digital Signage Solutions | An Article by _____ .”

Who and what is that, I thought, and clicked through to find a PR piece that is 500 or 600 words of pretty much nothing. I’m not linking or providing the name because there’s not enough there to even deserve a link or mention.

I learned, for example:

Experts at _____ opine that the procurement price of digital signage solutions is highly susceptible to frequent volatility. Extreme dynamic factors are at play that is rendering the volatility of the procurement price of digital signage solutions.

Ummm. OK … For $1,500 you can tap into all that level of insight in a full report.

The US address for the company is the exact same as one of the research factories that relentlessly issues expensive research reports on anything that moves.

There are real research companies out there who send market analysts to industry trade shows and actually know and understand the business. If you are going to invest money in research about the industry, invest a little time first to ascertain whether the researchers would actually know much about this space.

Your first “tell” is if the range of industry forecasts covers pretty much anything and everything you can think up. If you believe you’ll get worthwhile information on digital signage from researchers who can also tell you the “Growth of the Frozen Food Industry Driving the Demand for Myristic Acid,” then have at it.