Every day, m360 Research connects healthcare professionals and patients with research opportunities, giving us a front-row seat to witness how the market research landscape is being reshaped.
The industry is in flux. Expectations around speed, efficiency, and insight are rising across the ecosystem, as clients look for deeper understanding delivered faster, and with greater transparency.
We caught up with Neil Phillips, our Chief Strategy Officer, to hear his perspective on the forces shaping market research today, and what they mean for 2026 and beyond. Here are six forces Neil believes will shape the future of market research, and the implications for agencies and their pharma partners.
1. Faster, Smarter, Leaner Research
The demand for research that is faster and cheaper continues to dominate. Quality still matters (see “The Quality Dilemma”), but our partners are rarely asking for “quality” with the same intensity as they push for speed and cost efficiency. This drive has reshaped the industry: competitors have emerged, adoption of new technologies has risen, and processes have been streamlined to keep pace.
Operational efficiency has become a core requirement, and rightly so, but we risk a race to the bottom with quality only re-emerging as important when something goes wrong, when it is perhaps too late.
Concerns about data quality is increasing across the industry. While consumer research has faced serious issues (from weakly managed panels to fraudulent responses) the ripple effects extend into healthcare.
As a result, robust verification, respondent validation, and consistent quality controls can no longer seen as “nice to have.” They must be baked in by design, to form the foundation on which credible insights are built, not layered over the top like a sticking plaster, to protect the integrity of research and the decision-making it informs.
3. AI in Market Research: Promise and Peril
Artificial intelligence has moved from hype to more specific practical applications.
Traditional AI continues to find uses across the industry, contributing to operational efficiency, quality control, and personalisation of the participant experience.
Generative AI raised huge hopes, then triggered fears about disruption and fraud. Today, we are in a more balanced phase where its promise and risks are better understood. It is proving valuable in areas like qualitative analysis and transcript summarisation, but it also introduces challenges such as survey fraud.
The opportunity lies in thoughtful adoption: using AI to streamline or automate processes rather than replace the human judgement that underpins meaningful insight.
4. Respondent Attention in a Distracted World
Healthcare professionals, like all of us, face unprecedented time pressures and competing distractions. Multiple devices, streaming platforms, social media, and professional demands all fight for attention. This makes it harder than ever to secure survey participation. The solution is not gimmicks but respect: surveys that are targeted to the correct audience, designed for mobile, efficient, and genuinely engaging. A poor respondent experience can quickly damage participation. A strong one can create loyalty.
There are no magic bullets, we all must understand the dynamic, optimise the research process with the participant in mind and challenge each other to improve.
5. Fragmented Audiences, Lower Incidence Rates
Healthcare research is becoming more granular. What once meant recruiting “oncologists in a given market” now means targeting oncologists treating specific tumour types or classes and high patient loads. At the same time, increased focus on rare diseases naturally limits available audiences.
This is a key part of the participant experience. Inviting people to surveys we know they will not qualify for distracts them from the surveys they could qualify for and undermines their future participation. Avoiding it does no harm to the current survey but protects the industry’s ability to deliver on future surveys.
6. An Industry in Transformation
The relationships between pharma, agencies, and fieldwork partners are evolving. Increased scrutiny around fieldwork investment and controls is reshaping how research is run. Expert networks provide an increasingly important methodology alongside qualitative research. Agencies and fieldwork providers are central to this ecosystem, working in tandem. Agencies bring interpretation and strategic insight; fieldwork partners make it possible by delivering reach, quality, and operational excellence. Research sponsors increasingly want relationships with both. We need to adapt to these new expectations and embrace the changes that come with them.
Taken together, these forces show that market research is entering a period of profound transformation. Speed, cost, quality, fragmentation, engagement, and shifting industry roles are all interconnected, and their impact will only grow in the years ahead.
Just as importantly, we underpin everything we do with robust quality assurance. Our ISO-certified panel and processes, combined with dynamic profiling and verification checks, mean we can recruit healthcare professionals and patients with confidence. In a landscape where concerns about survey fraud and data integrity are increasing, this commitment to quality is what ensures our clients can trust the insights we deliver.
As 2026 progresses, one thing is clear: the future of market research belongs to those ready to embrace change.
