Can Open Access Journals transform Market Research? | Blog - BRIDGEi2i Analytics Solutions

"... Many different 'open' methods trace their origins to open source or free software paradigm. Free software movement started in 1980s against the practice of limiting the access to the source code of a software. Over the years it has shown that free availability of the resource does not impact the economic benefit of the entities operating in this sphere. The selling proposition for the companies became services rather than the products. In the past open source generated a significant interest among the software enthusiasts. Open source delved into the concepts of open design, open data, open access and many other 'open' movements that focused on increasing transparency and information sharing. The underlying theme for these movements has been to free-up knowledge for a larger social benefit ... Open data has empowered many to analyse and come up with interesting products and services. From retrieving data spread across different locations, open data shifts the balance towards making sense out of available data. The open data project of many governments have brought about more transparency in public systems. In 2009, the US government started a website to release a lot of government data in the public domain ... Academic researchers play an important role in diffusing the techniques developed by them among the marketing practitioners and intermediary organisations. A study published byInternational Journal of Research in Marketing explores the relationship between marketing science research and marketing practitioners. There is a dissonance between the various stakeholders in terms of the areas where the marketing research have higher impacts. Nevertheless, the techniques such as segmentation tools were results of the research in marketing ... The products and tools that marketing professionals use are derived from the academic research and this involves collaboration between the industry and academic experts. The 20 articles identified by the study to have had the most impact among marketing practitioners are restricted by subscription. The journals which publish these studies have also been viewed by a lesser number of practitioners indicating that the the ideas flow in limited spaces with higher sophistication. Accepting open access in research paradigm would improve the dissemination of ideas among a larger group of enterprising individuals who lack financial resources.  The marketers and businesses have to be keen on garnering the benefits of open access ..."