For the 25th anniversary of Economic and Business Studies at the UOC, professors Pacheco-Bernal and Jiménez-Zarco reflect on the way in which technology has influenced the disciplines of marketing and market research, both in terms of their evolution and their scope. They also present challenges linked to these disciplines and faced by organizations at a key moment of digital transformation. For marketing, technology has provided a before and after. Basic concepts that currently determine the core of the discipline emerge and are consolidated as technology places new tools, devices, channels and even environments within our reach. Marketing is going from the field of short-term sales to building and maintaining, in real time, complex and lasting relationships with a strong emotional component between agents of various natures and with varying interests. In terms of market research, the potential offered by the development of new technologies in understanding consumers, while it has not eclipsed more traditional market research, has modified the panorama with regard to the quality and quantity of the information obtained and the breadth of methodological options for gathering data. In the midst of the digital era, the integration of data coming from various sources and the use of hybrid methodologies enable the sector to anticipate trends and better understand market behaviour.

Just as the mobile revolution has had a profound impact on society, has created new economic activities and modified existing ones, the marketing research industry has not remained at the margin of all these transformations. As we will see below, mobile technologies have represented new challenges and opportunities for the professionals in the sector, creating new ways to collect data from consumers who participate in market research studies. However, in spite of the advantages that the use of mobile methodologies involve for industry, their adoption and diffusion as a technique to collect information still remains fairly limited. This article includes the data on research methodologies used by the sector and identify the main factors that have influenced the adoption of mobile market research, whether to incentivise or limit their use.