Market Research - Yankee Group

YANKEE GROUP

Yankee Group is a leading market researcher focused on Internet-related industries, such as e-commerce, telecommunications, and wireless. The communication industry's first research and advisory services firm, Yankee Group was founded by Harvard Business School graduate Howard Anderson in 1970. Eventually, the firm's focus shifted to networking technology, particularly enterprise applications and data communications networks. In 1986, Yankee Group began using the Technologically Advanced Family Survey to query U.S. households with regard to their use and perception of new technology products and services. Four years later, the firm launched its Mobile User Survey, seeking data regarding mobile technology use across North America.

Annual growth during the early 1990s exceeded 20 percent. During that time, the firm expanded into Canada, establishing a research and consulting unit in Ontario named Canadian Market Strategies. The Global Network Strategies Survey was first utilized in 1992, to gather information from corporate network administrators regarding network usage. In August of 1996, Primark Corp. acquired Yankee Group from Anderson for roughly $65 million. The company expanded into Brazil by opening an office in Sao Paulo in 1999; the number of World Wide Web users there, approximately 3.5 million, was expected to nearly double over the next two years. This growth prompted firms like MCI Communications Corp., Sprint Corp., and Bell Canada to move into the country, and Yankee Group believed a market for its services would exist there as well. As a result, the firm also launched its Internet Strategies Latin America Planning Service, which analyzed the regional Internet Service Provider (ISP) strategies, broadband Internet access development, business-to-business (B2) e-commerce initiatives, and Web hosting services among Latin American businesses.

It was during 1999 that Yankee Group also began to retool itself as an Internet industry expert. Not only did the Internet become a key focus of Yankee Group's research—along with wireless and communications industries—but the firm also began working to offer its Internet industry analysis on a global scale, reaching Europe, the Pacific Rim, and Latin America. YankeeTek was created to invest in small dot.com startups, which would receive strategic planning services from Yankee Group, as well as access to Yankee's research.

Yankee Group launched two new programs—Online Financial Strategies (OFS) Planning Service and Online Retail Strategies (ORS) Planning Service—in 2000. The OFS service analyzed the Internet's influence on the financial services industry in terms of consumer behavior, new products, market-place requirements, and business issues. The ORS service analyzed the behavior and attitudes of online shoppers, the business models used by online retailers, online shopping services, and fulfillment. Yankee Group also assisted clients within either industry to develop appropriate business strategies. Reuters plc, one of the world's leading information firms with $35 billion in market capitalization, bought for Yankee Group from Primark for $72.5 million in June. Yankee Group remained an autonomous entity, operating out of its parent's newly created global information business arm, known as Reuters Enterprise. The firm released its "Yankee Group Stars" list of the best online retailers in early 2001. That year, Yankee created a new Global Regulatory Strategies service to cover the regulatory issues surrounding international e-business.