What is a market researcher?

What attracts a client side (i.e. not a vendor) researcher to attend a market research conference?

• I'm Vice Chair for a conference that is going to be squarely focused on meeting the needs of client side researchers. The conference is sponsored by a major marketing association. Given the above I'm curious as to what would make you (as a client side researcher) attend such a conference? Is it the networking opportunities with other client side researchers, peer educational opportunities and information sharing, seeing presenters from other companies in your industry or something else entirely? Any feedback client side researchers could provide would be greatly appreciated as I, the Chair, and the marketing association driving this event are driven to make this event closely align with the needs of client side researchers.

• Answer:

  As a former supply side researcher and a soon-to-be client side researcher, opportunities for building my knowledge base or presentations by innovative client side researchers would be way more helpful than networking. Much of the research done on the client side is focused on products or services blanketed by an NDA - makes it hard to sustain a conversation with industry peers. How is that for a sample size of 1?