What I'm seeing lately is neither of those models. Many tech companies don't even have market research functions and instead have untrained product managers, marketers and designers conduct the work on which all major decisions will be made.

Armed with a book like The Lean Startup, making a few scrappy tests is fine when you're small and have no salaries to pay, or when it's a 'lab' in an established company where you already have some 'star' and 'cash cow' products to keep the money rolling in while you tinker.

When you have thousands of salaries to pay and you have amateurs conduct the work of experts, it is ruinous. You can easily spot these companies: they have one hit product and are completely unable to replicate its success, and if it starts to decline, they have no idea what to do.

I've never seen or heard of an in-house market research unit who is hired to collect data for a one-off planning event, or who ever does it to look clever. In-house research units are kept busy all year round with questions from the business - their WWHTBT - and might occasionally summarise their year-round activities in a slide deck for a three-day off-site. It's not "outsourcing" - in the very best of companies, the research director is part of the ELT.