The Council for Marketing and Opinion Research (CMOR) has introduced C.H.R.I.S. (CMOR’s Hotline and Research Information System), a toll-free number (800-887-CMOR) for consumers who want to know more about the survey research industry. The IVR-based system is accessible 24 hours a day and can help callers learn the importance of their role in the research process, researchers’ commitment to respondents, and howresearch and telemarketing are different. Callers can also learn how to reduce the number of telemarketing calls they receive. They can also leave a message for a CMOR staffperson or contact CMOR via its Web site (www.cmor.org) for more informarion.

Fifty figures in European market research, drawn from suppliers and multinational buyers of research, are backing an initiative aimed at creating a coordinated global advocacy of the market research industry’s case. Its first targets are to combat over-restrictive legislation and to make the case for research’s effective contribution to profitable commerce and sensitive government. The agreement emerged from the first Research Industry Summit Europe (RISE), held in Amsterdam in November under the auspices of the European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research (ESOMAR) and the European Federation of Associations of Market Research Organizations (EFAMRO). The first practical step will be the immediate setting up of a dedicated e-forum, facilitating a continuing top-level dialogue, opened out to a wider spectrum of the industry. The focus is on joint development of an agenda for action. The initiative will be continued at this month’s meeting of the U.S. industry Research Industry Leaders Forum. Observers from U.S. research organizations outlined their industry’s concerns about restrictive data protection legislation limiting legitimate research activities and indicated their support for a global orientation. A second RISE is planned for early summer 2000, focusing on lining up the resources required to push ahead a global agenda and also on the implications of e-commeme, another attention area identified at the
Amsterdam summit.

The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) Committee E-18 on Sensory Evaluation has announced two new task group activities within Subcommittee E18.05 onSensory Applications-General. The Accreditation Task Group plans to develop standardized qualifications for certification of laboratory facilities/ operations staff and programs in the field of sensory analysis. The Consumer Methods for Product Research Task Group is developing a manual to define qualitative and quantitative methods of sensory analysis.

Signficant profit opportunities await consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers if they focus on new product development, more efficient pricing and expanding distribution, said Joe Durrett, chairman and chief executive officer of Information Resources, Inc., Chicago, in remarks to an audience of company executives and Wall Street analysts at Schroder & Company’s Food, Beverage and Consumer Products Conference at New York’s Millennium Hotel in November. Durrett cited seven recent consumer trends that have created significant growth opportunities for the CPG industry over the past five years, and whose influence will continue into the Year 2000. Specifically:

  1. Convenience and portability - products such as bottled water, moist towelettes and lunch kits saw average sales increases of 98 percent since 1994.
  2. Ready-to-eat consumption - over $4 billion of growth in categories such as frozen pizza and appetizers, refrigerated dinners and fresh salad kits in past five years.
  3. Natural/organic foods - an evergrowing number of products bear nutritional claims, and natural/organic products will account for $9.4 billion in 1999.
  4. Functional foods - high-protein meals, energy bars and herbal-enhanced products grew in excess of 75 percent since 1994.
  5. Health and self-care - nine categories, including hair growth and hair coloring products, nutritional supplements, antacids and anti-smoking prod ucts, have grown from $3.5 billion in 1994 to nearly $7 billion in 1999.
  6. Extra care and indulgence rewards - sales of premium ice creams and premium-priced toothbrushes are growing rapidly; aromatherapy helped boost candle sales to $833 million.
  7. Female influence - with 60 percent of adult females working outside the home, sales of many beauty categories are up over 55 percent; conversely, hosiery sales have declined in today’s casual workplace.

The Arbitron Company, New York, has released its first Webcast ratings report, bringing broadcast-style audience measurement to the streaming media industry. The ratings firm determined that, in the month of October, more than 900,000 listeners tuned to 240 channels of audio programming offered by the first four streaming media servers to participate in the company’s new Internet audio ratings service. This first InfoStream ratings report compiled total audience estimates and average time spent tuning during the month of October for listeners to 240 Internet audio channels being streamed by ABC Radio Networks, BroadcastAmerica.com, LaMusica and Magnitude Network. The InfoStream service determined that, for these four streaming content pr.oviders, Internet listeners spent over 1.3 million hours listening tuned to Internet audio during the month of October. Internet listeners logged 36,000 hours tuned to the channels streamed by LaMusica; 41,000 hours to BroadcastAmerica.com channels; 440,000 hours to the Magnitude Network channels and 816,000 hours to the channels streamed by ABC Radio Networks. The top three InfoStream outlets in terms of total listeners for the month of October are www.texasrebelradio.com, the Magnitude Network-streamed programming of adult alternative station KFAN-FM of Johnson City, Texas, with 83,900 cumulative listeners; www.kpig.com, of adult alternative station KPIG-FM, Monterey, Calif., with 70,200 listeners; and, www.cd93.com, of modern adult contemporary station KCDU-FM, Monterey, Calif., with 66,300 listeners. In terms of time spent tuning, the top three Internet channels were: www.smoothjazz1059.com, the smooth jazz ABC station WJZW-FM, Washington D.C., streamed by Real Broadcast Networks, with eight hours and 26 minutes average time spent tuning; www.kpla.com, the adult contemporary station KPLA-FM, Columbia, Mo., with six hours and 32 minutes; and www.wkdd.com, the hot adult contemporary station WKDD-FM, Akron, Ohio, with five hours and 26 minutes average time spent tuning.

"This first InfoStream Report, although just a sampling of the huge online Webcast listening market, clearly indicates that small market broadcast stations are getting a big boost in audience thanks to streaming their programming on the Internet," says Joan FitzGerald, director of marketing, Arbitron Internet Information Services. "The leading Internet radio station in our first report isn’t even in anArbitron rated metro, yet its Webcast on Magnitude Networks posted a cumulative audience that exceeds that of many stations in top-rated metropolitan areas."

InfoStream is a server-side measurement, which captures all tuning to participating streamed media channels by compiling a census of Internet tuning sessions of unique players. This first InfoStream ratings report compiled cume audience estimates and average time spent tuning during the month of October for listeners to 240 Internet audio channels being streamed by ABC Radio Networks, BroadcastAmerica.com, LaMusica and Magnitude Network.

Answers Research Inc., Solana Beach, Calif., has formed a domestic IT panel to accelerate the company’s ability to provide actionable research to its clients. The introduction of the Web-deployed panel is intended to reduce non-response bias associated with traditional recruitment methods while decreasing overall research costs. The panel will include information technology managers and chief information officers in the U.S., representing a cross-section of industries, who have agreed to participate in ongoing IT research to assess trends and to evaluate new advanced technology products and services. The types of studies for which the panel will be utilized will range from straightforward quantitative studies to new product concept testing to conjoint surveys. Answers Research developed the panel in response to increasing over-sampling of advanced technology decision-makers in the U.S. "U.S. IT managers and CIOs are one of the most over-surveyed groups of respondents in the world," says Pat Funes, Answers Research’s vice president of operations. "We have seen a dramatic reduction in response rates - a 46 percent decline in willingness to participate in the last four years. Our response to these realities was to form a panel of qualified professionals interested in influencing the design of future products and services." In exchange for
panel participation, panel members receive regular honoraria and access to general IT facts gleaned from Answers Research-sponsored studies.

Northern Light Technology, Inc., a Cambridge, Mass., search engine developer (www.NorthernLight.com), and DeepCanyon, a Seattle-based Hewlett-Packard e-publishing company that provides research to technology marketers (www.deepcanyon.com), announced a partnership in which DeepCanyon will deploy Northern Light’s search capabilities to enhance its customized market research. The agreement provides access to the Web and selected sources from the Northern Light Special Collection, an on-line business library of trade igublications, journal articles, and industry and market research reports.

The management team of Greenfield Online Inc., a Wilton, Conn., research firm, has purchased the company from Andrew Greenfield. Details of the private transaction were not disclosed. Separately, the firm announced the signing of a $6.0 million banking facility with Gteyrock Capital of Los Angeles. The facility will be used to fund Greenfield Online’s Internet-based information and market research services model. Greenfield Online has experienced 300 percent year-over-year revenue growth and is expected to con tinue at this rate into the year 2000. The firm also announced the first of two moves to accommodate its wowing online marketing research business. In November, the company opened the doors to a new 20,085 square-foot facility in Wilton where it will reside pending the completion in fourth quarter 2000 of a 30,000 square-foot executive campus building in the same complex. The new headquarters include a technology center designed to house the proprietary Web-survey system and technology infrastructure that support the company’s on-line marketing research capabilities.

lnsightExpress, an on-line research affiliate of Greenwich, Conn.-based NFO Worldwide, is offering a fully automated on-line market research service. Supported by the profile-driven targeting services of Engage Technologies, and backed by NFO Worldwide, InsightExpress provides consumer focused managers with realtime access to targeted consumer groups and to existing customers via their own lists. InsightExpress enables decision-makers to test new ideas, screen new concepts, gauge customer satisfaction, survey employees, test advertising and gather insight into the needs, attitudes and behaviors of consumers.

ACNielsen Corporation, Stamford, Conn., has acquired Media Monitoring Services Ltd. (MMS), an advertising measurement service headquartered near Ascot, England. The firm covers the U.K.’s $22 billion advertising industry, tracking advertising activity, spending and creative content across the print, television, radio, direct mail, cinema and outdoor channels for media companies, agencies and advertisers. Its U.K. business, along with smaller operations in Australia and Asia, generated revenues last year of $10 million.

Los Angeles-based Lieberman Research Worldwide has acquired, in parmership with Lieberman Research Group in New York, Opinionsite.com, a full-service Internet research company offering panel and data collection services. Opinionsite.com will continue to be led by Andrew Korman, its founder and president.

Video Research Ltd., a Tokyo-based media and marketing research and consulting firm, has launched Video Research Net-corn Ltd., an Internet audience research company that provides coverage of audience interaction with Web sites, ad banners and e-commerce transactions. In measuring Internet audiences, Net-com uses metering methodology developed by NTT, licensed trough NTT Advanced Technologies, to measure actual Internet audienceusage behavior in real-time. Currently 3,000 sample households are under measurement in Japan with the test data due to be delivered in January. Commercial services will follow in April.

Survey.com and CMP Media’s Intelligent Enterprise magazine have formed a cooperative research partnership designed to produce a series of surveys and reports on the business intelligence and data warehouse BI/DW) market. Cooperative projects will identify and track the major trends, issues, and gowth areas in the burgeoning BI/DW market.

Charleston, W.Va.-based McMillion Research has formed a partnership with Denver-based Paragon Research.

New York-based Jupiter Communications Inc., an Internet commerce information firm, has
expanded into Latin America with the launch of a new research service, a version of the company’s Internet Commerce Forum for the market in Latin America (see Research Calendar for listing), access to one of the region’s consumer research panels, and the establishment of a company sales presence in the region. At the core of Jupiter’s expansion into the region is the launch of the Latin America Market Research Module, which will include a series of reports and analyst notes addressing the outlook for Internet access, on-line retailing, on-line advertising, and other opportunities in the region. Jupiter will have an exclusive arrangement with IBOPE, a Latin American research firm based in Brazil, to conduct primary data collection of the Internet economy in Latin America. Jupiter is building a sales presence in Latin America to distribute its range of research products, through a series of reseller ageements. Jupiter will manage the selling of its products through its relationship with IBOPE. Similar ageements are anticipated over the next several months for other countries in the region.

Capita Research Group, Blue Bell, Pa., has conducted a market research test of Interact banner ads supplied by U.S. Interactive, an Internet professional services firm. The test assessed the ability of Capita’s Engagement Testing System to accurately identify from a cluster of banner ads those with high click-through rates. Capita tested 48 respondents by showing them portal sites and then the banner ads. Using the firm’s electroencephalogram (EEG)-based technology, respondents’ brainwaves were measured for relative levels of attentiveness as they watched. "Our system successfully identified the banner ads with the highest real-time click-through," says David Hunter, Capita’s founder and CEO. The company conducted its own independent follow-up study that validated the results of the first test.

Mature Marketing and Research, Boston, has introduced the MMR Boomer Poll, which will survey consumers born between 1946 and 1964 on attitudes, motivations and product and service choices in the following categories: financial (banking and investment), travel and leisure, personal care and health care, food products, fast-food, and automotive.

Cyber Dialogue has moved its offices down a few floors and now has a new address and phone number: 304 Hudson St., 4th floor, New York, N.Y.

Arbitron is now offering a new release of its Tapscan agency planning and buying software. Version 5.6 now has a 21+ age break, socioeconomic demographics, and access to Arbitron’s Qualitative Diary information. The firm has also released a faster version of Arbitron Data Express (ADE 2.1), which allows media professionals to down_load their Arbitron data. It is now available to registered users free of charge through the Arbitron Data Express link..

Richard Kurtz & Associates, a qualitative research consulting firm, has moved to 24 E. 21st St., 4th fl., New York, N.Y.

San Diego-based information provider Claritas has redesigned its www.sitereports.com Web site. Using
customer feedback, Claritas has enhanced the site’s interface, provided a greater range of report and payment options, and added other new features.

National Computer Systems, Inc., a Minneapolis information services firm, has been certified by the National Committee for Quality Assurance to conduct Consumer Assessment of Heath Plan Study (CAHPS 2.0H/PPO) and Management of Menopause (MoM) surveys for the year 2000.

Canandaigua Wine Company has chosen Information Resources, Inc., Chicago, as its primary syndicated scanner data supplier in a new longterm ageement that extends into 2005.

Maritz Marketing Research, St. Louis, is establishing an office in Mexico City, Mexico. Ricardo Rene Calva Lopez will manage Maritz’s research activities in Mexico, focusing on the automotive industry. The office, Maritz Motivation de Mexico (Maritz Performance Improvement Company of Mexico), will be located at 78 Gobernador J.G. Covarrubias, San Miguel Chapultepec.

Separately, Maritz Marketing Research has changed the name of its Maritz AmeriPoll consumer survey to Maritz Poll, reflecting the expansion of the poll to include respondents outside of the U.S.

Nancy Hardwick Market Research Services has changed its name to Hardwick Market Research Services and has moved to 8720 S.E. 45th St., Mercer Island, Wash.

SPSS Inc., Chicago, has purchased Vento Software, Inc., a provider of business performance management solutions. The transaction, completed November 29, 1999, was executed as a pooling f interests in which SPSS issued approximately 550,000 shares of its common stock.

Evanston, Ill.-based ad tracking firm Market Advantage announced that Sears, Roebuck and Co. renewed its three-year contract with the firm. Under the terms of the contract, Market Advantage will provide retail print advertising data to Sears through 2002.