How to conduct surveys for the UK's competition regulators

The competition regulator and consumer regulator have published a set of draft guidelines for companies to follow when producing studies that they hope will bolster their cases in front of the regulators. A consultation on those guidelines has just opened.

The guidelines seek to ensure that research on which regulators are being asked to rely is fair, transparent and actually represents the likely views of the entire market under analysis.

"Reporting survey research transparently should include providing a full description of the objectives of the research and the methods used," the draft said. "A report should contain sufficient detail to demonstrate that good research practice was followed at each stage."

"If the behaviours and attitudes of interest in the population are expected to vary systematically with certain characteristics, then the sample selected should have broadly the same composition by these characteristics as does the population," it said.

The guidelines insist that research produced by companies should comply with the research industry's usual standards.

"Where analysis of survey research is presented, this should conform to social research good practice," it said. "The analysis should set out fully the responses gathered for each question and the sampling uncertainty associated with population estimates based upon them."

When companies are attempting to merge, research is used to identify any crossover in the markets in which they operate and quantify how much of that market each party controls so that competition authorities can decide if a merger would be anti-competitive or not. Consumers' views and attitudes may also form the basis of a decision.

The CC and OFT said that because the research-commissioning companies had a stake in the outcome of regulators' decisions, there should be transparency about the conduct of the research.

"Where a market research agency has conducted a consumer survey on behalf of one or more merging parties or their advisors, a comprehensive agency report of the research, including the research terms of reference and a clear response to them by professionally-qualified agency staff, is most likely to carry evidential weight," said its proposed guidance.

The regulators said that different cases will depend to differing degrees on research produced by companies seeking to merge.

"The situations in which consumer survey research may be deployed to investigate aspects of a merger vary," said the draft guidance. "The CC and the OFT will always assess the evidential value of survey research in the light of the particular circumstances of a case. In doing so, however, we will be guided by the elements of good practice that have been set out above."

The consultation on the guidelines will be open until 3rd September.