Research Industry News January 2004

News notes

C&R Research Services , Chicago, has brought all of its qualitative offerings under the single brand name InVision. InVision is an addition to C&R’s branded quantitative services including KidzEyes, TeensEyes, LatinoEyes and Sage Advice.

The Mexico office of Millward Brown has received the ISO 9001:2000 quality certificate for all its operations.

Netherlands-based VNU has announced a new organizational structure for its largest business group, VNU Marketing Information. The new structure includes the appointment of a global CEO for ACNielsen (see Names of Note) and the creation of a new unit, VNU Advisory Services, that is charged with developing advanced business solutions for clients.

Catalina Marketing Corporation is looking to sell some of its business units, including its custom research division, Catalina Marketing Research Solutions. The custom research division previously was known as Alliance Research. Catalina Marketing bought Alliance Research in 1999. Specifically, Catalina said it will realign and restructure its domestic and international businesses to focus primarily on point-of-sale applications within the consumer packaged goods, retail and pharmaceutical industries.

In early December, Gingko Acquisition Corp. announced that, based upon a preliminary tally by LaSalle Bank N.A., the depositary for its tender offer, and the tender of shares pursuant to notices of guaranteed delivery, approximately 27,879,979 shares of common stock of Information Resources, Inc. (IRI) had been tendered into Gingko’s tender offer as of December 1, 2003 at 12:00 midnight, New York City time. This figure represents approximately 88.56 percent of the outstanding shares of IRI common stock. Gingko accepted all of the shares that were validly tendered in the subsequent offering period, and was to promptly pay the offer consideration for those shares of one CVR and $3.30 in cash per share, the same consideration paid throughout the offering period.

A tender of shares in this amount would enable Gingko to exercise its top-up option under its merger agreement with IRI to acquire the number of additional IRI common shares that is necessary for Gingko to own more than 90 percent of IRI’s outstanding common shares. As previously reported, Gingko’s acquisition of at least 90 percent of IRI’s outstanding common shares will allow Gingko to engage in a short-form merger with IRI under Delaware law without requiring a stockholder vote. On closing of the merger, all remaining IRI stockholders will receive the same CVR and $3.30 in cash per share that were issued and paid in the offer.

Acquisitions

Calabasas, Calif.-based Informa Research Services has acquired Barry Leeds and Associates, Inc. , a New York research firm. Paul Lubin will be the managing director of Barry Leeds and Associates, Inc. He will manage the fulfillment end of the mystery shop and compliance testing as the two companies’ operations are integrated and will further become a senior vice president at Informa Research Services, Inc. Michael Adler becomes the CEO of Barry Leeds and Associates, Inc.

Chicago-based employment firm CPRi, Inc. has acquired The Marketing Link , a Chicago-based employment firm specializing in placement of marketing research associates. The Marketing Link’s operations will move from Lincoln Park to CPRi’s offices in the John Hancock Building, making the Chicago headquarters the second largest division in the company.

Chicago-based SPSS Inc. has acquired DataDistilleries , a Netherlands-based developer of analytic applications.

Alliances/strategic partnerships

Sports Research Partnership (SRP), a joint venture between SGMA International and Sports Marketing Surveys (SMS), has been formed to provide market research services to the sporting goods industry. William Lawliss has joined SRP as director of business development. He was founder of Sports Research Inc., a market research company that was purchased by SMS in 1998. The new company will initially offer research services in the team sports, fitness equipment and athletic footwear industry segments. In addition, the new firm will offer custom research services by using the consumer panel derived from its sports participation survey and online research using a panel of active sports participants for ad hoc and continued research, based on software developed by SMS for its Sporting Insights panel.

Reston, Va.-based Wirthlin Worldwide has formed a strategic alliance with Tedesco Analytics Inc. , a marketing sciences consultancy, to develop products and services designed to measure communications and marketing return on investment and improve marketers’ ability to look at their businesses.

New York-based Arbitron Inc. and TNS Media Intelligence/CMR have signed a marketing agreement to provide TNSMI/CMR’s spot television advertising tracking data to Arbitron’s regional and local advertising agency customers. Arbitron’s TAPSCAN Software Suite now includes Market Analysis, a new service that will enable agencies to process TNSMI/CMR’s spot TV ad tracking data. Arbitron is the only company authorized to license TNSMI/CMR local TV intelligence to regional and local advertising agency clients.

Association/organization news

Britain’s Market Research Society (MRS) has awarded MRS Fellowships and Honorary Fellowships to individuals in recognition of their ongoing contribution to market research. The MRS Honorary Fellowships are awarded to those working outside market research but who have given good service or support to it. The first award was made to Professor Michael Thomas, who has contributed to the theory and practice of marketing. As president of the MRS since 1999, Thomas has been influential in forming many of the Society’s recent policies, particularly in the area of professional development. The second Honorary Fellowship was awarded to Richard Webber, who applied cluster analysis to the 1971 U.K. Census to study inner city deprivation. He saw the potential of area classifications for market research and took his first classification of residential neighborhoods, named ACORN, to the market research community. This led to the birth of the geodemographics industry in the U.K. and Webber is regarded as its founder. He subsequently also developed the MOSAIC classification. For their exceptional contribution to the market research industry, nine new MRS Fellowships were also awarded to: Don Beverly, Susan Blackall, Heather Dunn, Stephen Ellis, Sally Ford-Hutchinson, Kathleen Hamilton, Jonathan Jephcott, Corrine Moy and Richard Roberts-Miller.

Awards/rankings

The winners of the John and Mary Goodyear Award of Best International paper were presented at The European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research’s qualitative research conference in November. The top paper was “Research for innovation: fitting the design process at Philips Design,” by Monica Bueno and Lucile Rameckers, Philips Design , Netherlands . Also winning was a paper titled “The ‘true’ inner self: a qualitative assessment of the Mexican consumer’s psychological and cultural anthropological construct,” by Carol Culebro Stewart, Ford de México, Mexico; Michael Francesco Alioto and Amy Routhier, The RDA Group, Inc., U.S.; and Jorge Cherbosque, The Global Consulting Group , U.S.

Information Tools won the MRS/ASC Joint Award for Technology Effectiveness for its Harmoni data analysis tool. The award is co-sponsored by the Market Research Society and the Association for Survey Computing.

Flamingo International , a U.K.-based qualitative market research agency, was named Best Agency 2003 in the BMRA Awards for Research Business Effectiveness. Other winners in the awards, which are designed to recognize best practices among member companies of the British Market Research Association (BMRA) in the business of research, were Green Light International in the category of Innovation; Nunwood Consulting in the category of People Management (Smaller Agency); TNS in the category of People Management (Larger Agency); and Test Research in the Quality category.

New accounts/projects

Interviewing Service of America (ISA), Van Nuys, Calif., has chosen Seattle-based TeleSage, Inc. to provide it with telephone survey technology for a new exit polling system during the 2004 presidential primaries and the November 2004 general election. ISA, along with Universal Survey Research, won a joint contract in August from Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International to provide technology for gathering, tabulating and transmitting information on voter behavior for television and newspaper media outlets. In October 2003, ISA selected TeleSage’s SmartQuest telephone survey software to gather and transmit information from precinct field interviewers.

New companies/new divisions/relocations/expansions

Global Market Insite has relocated its corporate headquarters to

Braintree, Mass.-based Perseus Development Corporation has opened Perseus-Asia Ltd., a Singapore-based corporation, with funding provided by Perseus.

Company earnings reports

Paris-based Ipsos’ consolidated revenues for the first nine months of 2003 came in at 400.9 million euros, up 7.3 percent on the same period of 2002. This improved performance is based on three factors. First, strong organic growth of 9.5 percent over the first three quarters of 2003. This growth was three times higher than that of the overall market. During the third quarter alone, organic growth reached 9 percent. Second, the positive impact of newly consolidated companies, which generated a 9.4 percent growth in activity over the first nine months of 2003. Third, persistently negative currency effects resulting from the translation into euros of Ipsos’ revenues from all non-euro zone countries and regions (namely the U.K. , central Europe, North and Latin America, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East ). These currency translations had an adverse impact of 11.6 percent on Ipsos’ total revenues for the first nine months of 2003, compared with a negative effect of 15 percent in the first half. At constant exchange rates, Ipsos’ first nine-month revenues would have come close to 445 million euros, showing an 18.9 percent increase on the same period of 2002.

GfK Group completed the third quarter of 2003 with a 6.5 percent increase in sales to EUR 431.1 million and an overproportional increase in EBIT after income from participations of 50.5 percent to EUR 46.8 million compared with the same period in the previous year. As a result, GfK increased its margin of 7.7 percent at the end of the third quarter of 2002 to the present figure of 10.9 percent. Three factors were crucial to the overproportional increase in EBIT: rising sales and the exploitation of synergies in the Group`s international network; high-margin acquisitions; efficient cost management. In addition, lower expenses in net financial income and a lower tax ratio compared with the same period in the previous year resulted in the consolidated total income rising by 64.2 percent to EUR 24.0 million, more rapidly than EBIT.