This study investigates whether market research expenditure patterns of eight European countries including Germany, France and the UK do converge or not over the 1990-1994 period. The analysis leads to mixed conclusions. As far as specific marketing research modes are concerned, converging trends are indeed observed for only a few categories of expenditures, notably for continuous panel (whose share of market research expenditures is increasing) and face-to-face interviews (whose share is decreasing). With regard to the general pattern of evolution when all modes are simultaneously taken into consideration, two opposite trends are observed. There is indeed a general tendency towards convergence among the eight countries surveyed. It appears however, that within a subgroup of core countries that include Austria, France, Germany, and Greece some diverging shifts are also occurring simultaneously