[dworin]

A large number of my clients have been research companies and consulting firms, and one thing I've seen is that 'research based consulting' is a phrase that research companies frequently use to sell themselves as more than researchers, but that is completely unimportant to clients. On the client side, it's assumed that most consultants will use research in some form or another.

[mswen]

It seems that there is a class of consultants that are essentially gurus. Their advice doesn't come out of fresh primary research on the client situation and current market dynamics. Instead they speak from ongoing expertise and keeping their finger on the pulse of a particular market. I know that I used "Research-based Consulting" phrase sometimes to set apart my methodology - that is the client is paying for fresh research customized to their unique situation with a consultative type interpretation and advice to tie it all together at the end. But as I was saying even that phrase doesn't really capture stuff like text analysis, web scraping, web development and operations analysis - some of these are very much development and systems oriented.

Data science isn't a perfect label but it seems to be currently defined in a way that fits pretty well with the mix of things that I do - so I am willing to use it.