Professionally well-equipped marketing researchers enjoy opportunities along multiple possible career paths. For the qualified researcher, opportunities exist within manufacturers, retailing, advertising agencies, consulting companies, independent research companies, and not-for-profit organizations. Researchers often develop careers within one of those channels, moving from analyst to manager to director to VP within a manufacturer, retailer, or financial firm. Others move from analyst to account manager to director to VP or partner within an independent research company or consulting firm.
Some other researchers build careers by moving across channels to positions of increasing responsibility leveraging the skills and experience of one channel in another. One might start at a research company, move to a manufacturer, and then go into consulting.
The business and analytic skills built in a marketing research career are highly translatable to other functions with a firm. There are numerous examples of researchers moving into other areas of management and succeeding all the way up to CEO in Fortune 500 companies.
While an intelligent, motivated individual with an appropriate undergraduate degree may often find entry-level employment within the marketing research industry, most organizations value, for both the short term and long term, candidates who have the technical skills, perspective, management skills, and the leadership and confidence that come with an advanced degree.
The coincident proliferation of information about the customer/consumer and the ever-increasing need to reach the customer more efficiently and effectively through evidenced-based marketing, drives the need for, and the opportunities offered to, well-trained experienced marketing researchers. This demand, and the competitive advantage the effective marketing researcher brings to the firm by impacting product development and marketing decisions, supports an attractive and well-compensated career path. Total compensation for professional marketing researchers can approach six figures for well-prepared M.B.A.'s and exceed a quarter-million dollars for VP's and above.
The following source, published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor, provides an outlook for general marketing researchers: Occupational Outlook Handbook.