We receive many offers of collaboration, the majority of which we have to turn down. We do this partly because we are busy already doing research and sharing the findings to our Ehrenberg-Bass Sponsors. We also turn down requests because we are fiercely independent, and must maintain the world’s trust in that independence (and hence credibility).
We are inspired by industry problems, but we don’t allow any sponsor(s) to direct our research.
If we were to accept financial support and/or data it would be under the following conditions:
(1) the sponsor(s) have no say in which data we can collect (2) the sponsor(s) have no say in how we analyse any data, and (3) the sponsor(s) have no say in which papers we can publish, and no papers are to be vetted by sponsors*.
We do not endorse any marketing services provider. There are agencies/consultancies that are inspired by our work, some are more knowledgeable of our findings than others, but we are not in a position where we can judge their offerings to their clients.
* We can protect the names of corporations and other private information in our papers and reports.
Read about our Research Ethics Policy.
Clarifying Statement – March 2024
In mid-February 2024 a few marketing industry news websites published articles that announced a ‘partnership’ between an organisation and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. It should have instead referred to a ‘sponsorship’. To clarify, this organisation is a valued sponsor of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. And as per our policy above, we do not partner on commercial research or services. We are grateful to all of our generous sponsors but refrain from judging or endorsing their services to maintain our independence.