News notes
Salt Lake City research firm RTNielson Company has changed its name to NSØN. The name NSØN is derived from Nielson, which is the last name of company founder Ronald T. Nielson. The Ø is Scandinavian. The new name is pronounced "enn-son." RTNielson Company will continue to serve as the political research specialty brand for NSØN. The telephone number and Web address for RTNielson will remain the same. A new Web site will be launched for NSON at www.NSONinfo.com.
Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) has announced the integration of its Hong Kong and Mainland China operations. The amalgamation unites activities across offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou.
Acquisitions
The U.S. business unit of IMS Health has acquired New Hampshire-based Marketing Initiatives, Inc., an information and services firm specializing in health care facility profile data.
New York-based Arbitron Inc. has acquired a license to the streaming audio audience measurement system and related assets from MeasureCast, Inc., a Portland, Ore., company founded in 1999 to develop streaming audience measurement services for Intemet broadcasters, advertisers and media buyers.
The transaction gives Arbitron a license to market and use the MeasureCast streaming audio audience measurement system as well as related technology used to produce streaming audience measurement services. Arbitron is also purchasing the "MeasureCast" trademark and other assets necessary to produce and maintain a streaming audience measurement service. Financial terms were not disclosed.
MeasureCast, Inc. will continue to develop technologies and services with its strategic partners, under a new and as-yet-unannounced name. MeasureCast partners, ipcluding Nielsen Media Research, NetRatings and Trans Cosmos International, retain certain rights to the MeasureCast services and technology.
Alliances/strategic partnerships
Chicago-based-Information Resources, Inc. and Vytek Solutions, Inc., have signed a co-development agreement to deliver the Apollo In-Store Mobile Management System (AIMMS) to consumer packaged goods retailers and manufacturers around the world. AIMMS enables retailers and manufacturers to use handheld devices to collaboratively address the issues of schematic creation, compliance, out-ofstocks, and inventory control at the shelf level.
Association/organization news
Terri Turley, consumer and market knowledge manager at Procter & Gamble, has replaced Eric Leininger, senior vice president of Kraft Foods, as co-chair of CMOR.
Following a year-end review, CMOR announced an increase in revenues of more than 15 percent, and an increase of 8 percent in membership, with clientside membership increasing almost 40 percent (this latter increase a specific goal of CMOR’s).
The Mystery Shopping Providers Association has created the MSPA Shopper Gold Certification Workshop, designed to provide participants with information and professional techniques needed to increase their knowledge as mystery shoppers. Topics include: what to do when applying to mystery shopping companies, how to write reports that tell a story, and how to work with mystery shopping companies and independent schedulers. Attendees will be awarded "Gold Certification" from the MSPA, which shows shopping fu-ms that the shopper has been trained in the essentials of mystery shopping and has agreed to uphold professional standards and ethics.
Thierry Tartafin has been named markefing communications and PR manager for The European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research (ESOMAR).
New accounts/projects
Millward Brown Precis has won a bid to be the exclusive provider of media measurement for Pfizer Consumer Healthcare. It has also been appointed to handle a project by Georgia-Pacific.
BMRB Social Research has been commissioned by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in the U.K. to carry out a survey of 3,000 households who need help to enable them to live independently. The survey will measure satisfaction with the support services they receive. Together with NatCen (the National Centre for Social Research), BMRB Social Research have also won a new U.K. Home Office research contract. The 10,000 interview survey among people aged 10-65 will include questions on the use of alcohol and drags, self-reported criminal activity and contact with the criminal justice system. The findings will help the Home Office understand the extent of criminal behavior and the lifestyle factors that predict it.
Menlo Park, Calif.-based Knowledge Networks, Inc. (KN) has announced the extension of its relationship with Microsoft Corp. and the MSN TV service. The new agreement ensures KN’s ability to maintain a Web-based consumer research panel that represents the entire U.S. population. Knowledge Networks uses random digit-dial techniques to create a sample of the full U.S. population; homes that do not have the Internet are provided with MSN TV units that allow them to participate in the company’s weekly Web-based surveys.
Enfoque Pesquisa, a Brazilian market research company, has opened an in-house call center using Global Market Insite’s Net-CATI system as the base platform for management of all telephone interviews.
GfK-USM, the Ukraine subsidiary of Germany-based GfK, has signed a contract with the Television Industry Committee, an association of the major TV stations in the Ukraine, including ICTV, Inter, Novy Kanal, STB and three of the country’s advertising agencies, DMB&B, Effect Integrated Media and Provid/BBDO. From 2003, GfK-USM will initially measure TV ratings in the Ukraine for a period of four years. GfKUSM will set up a TV panel and measure TV ratings for Ukrainian TV stations and programs. Initially, the TV panel will comprise 1,200 selected representative households in cities with a population of 50,000 or over, which need to have a telephone line. From the third year onward, the sample of households will be increased to 1,500. The four-year term of the contract is worth almost EUR 6 million.
Herndon, Va.-based WebSurveyor Corporation announced that pet products retailer Petco has selected it for online survey and hosting services. Petco will use WebSurveyor to assess its e-commerce programs and conduct product satisfaction surveys.
Arbitron Inc., New York, has signed Dial Communications - Global Media Inc. as a new radio network provider for the company’s RADAR network radio ratings service. RADAR will report the Dial Communications - Global Media’s Contemporary network, Dial- Global Contemporary, effective with the March 2003 release (RADAR 76). The addition of the new network will bring the total number of RADAR-rated networks to 37.
New companies/new divisions/relocations
Millward Brown has opened a new office in Hamburg, Germany. Client service director Corinna Streibart moves from Millward Brown’s Frankfurt office to head the Hamburg team.
San Francisco-based research firm Cheskin has opened an office in New York. It will be headed by Stephen Palacios.
Company earnings reports
Menlo Park, Calif.-based Knowledge Networks posted a record $7.5 million in revenue for the third quarter of 2002, representing 36 percent growth over the same quarter last year. In the first nine months of its current financial year, Germany-based GfK Group’s sales rose by 9.9 percent from EUR 368.3 million to 404.8 million compared with the same period in the previous year. In the same period, EBIT including income from participations rose from EUR 24.0 million to 31.1 million and consolidated total income from EUR 8.4 million to 14.6 million.
News spotlight
Asia-Pacific research industry at $2 billion
The marketing and opinion research industry in Asia-Pacific is worth $2.027 billion and represents 13 percent of the worldwide market for market research, according to a global market research study from ESOMAR (The European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research). This compares to North America, which represents 41 percent of the worldwide market and Europe, representing 40 percent of the global market.
Due to the economic slowdown and to a faltering market in Japan, the Asia-Pacific market shrank by 4.8 percent from 2000 to 2001 when measured in U.S. dollars.
The largest market for market research in Asia-Pacific is Japan at $1.070 billion, followed by Australia ($249 million) and China ($193 million).
Singapore is the ninth largest market in the region with market research revenues estimated at $35 million. Singapore has the fourteenth largest population in the region and this means that the average per capita spending on market research is high for the region. This also reflects the fact that per capita GNP in Singapore ($25,000) is second highest in the region, coming only after Japan at $38,000.
Expectations for the next five years (2002-2006) are for moderate growth at around 4-5 percent growth per year for the majority of countries. China, India and Vietnam will probably be above this level with Japan again not expecting significant growth (1 percent annually). It is estimated that the total market will grow from around $2 billion in 2001 to $3 billion in 2006.
Asia-Pacific is widely diverse with the two largest populations worldwide (China and India) at one end and some very small countries at the other end (Singapore and New Zealand).
Asia-Pacific also has some countries with the highest GDP per capita such as Japan, Singapore and Australia and some of the lowest (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar.) Asia differs from most other key regions because of this huge variation in both population and per capita income.
Asia holds around 60 percent of the world’s population and forecasts are that this percentage will remain constant, though the total numbers will still grow rapidly.
However at present Asia only makes up 30 percent of world GDP but even by 2015 Asia is expected to increase its share of a greatly expanded GDP to around 40 percent obviously indicating a huge rise in per capita income and GDP.
