Cullen Retail Services Inc., Rockford, Ill., has changed its name to Cullen Research Group Inc. The company, founded in 1987, has expanded its customer base beyond retail outfits, prompting the name change. CRG conducts customer satisfaction surveys for manufacturers, service providers and professional clients.
ICT Group Inc., Langhorne, Pa., has purchased American Tele/Response, a national telephone marketing service company with headquarters in Drexel Hill, Pa. A 17-year-old company that employs 400 people, ATR has telemarketing centers in Drexel Hill and Kearneysville, W.V. The purchase includes ATR's 300 predictive outbound and fully automated telephone marketing stations, giving ICT more than 1,200 stations. ICT has named Philip Verruto as president of ATR, which will be dedicated to handling inbound 800-number calls. The purchase follows ICT's February acquisition of Miami-based Spaniel.
Field Response Co., Chicago, has opened an office in central Mississippi, allowing the company to expand its telephone services to cover Jackson; Birmingham, Ala.; Memphis, Tenn.; New Orleans; Dallas and Houston. Field Response now has 20 telephone banks for nationwide surveys, telemarketing and recruiting. The Mississippi office contact is Linda Hunt. The office's address and phone number are: 300 E. Jefferson St., PO Box 68, Kosciusko, MS 39090.
The M/A/R/C Group, Irving, Texas, reports net income of $712,000 on revenues of $ 17 million for the third quarter of 1994, ended September 30. The company reported net income of $178,000 for the same period in 1993. Earnings per share jumped from 5 cents in the third quarter of '93 to 27 cents in 1994. For the first nine months of '94, M/A/R/C reports net earnings of $1.78 million, a 74 percent increase over year-ago earnings. Earlier this year, M/A/R/C bought up 440,000 shares of its common stock.
Amy J. Yoffie, formerly of Analytical Computer Service, has opened Research Connections Inc. The new company offers Field Connect online multicity mall surveys, Disks Connect disk-by-mail studies, Phone Connect large multisite CATI surveys. Modem Connect bulletin board research and other marketing research services. The company's address and phone numbers are: 414 Central Ave., Westfield, NJ 07090.
Market Facts Inc., Arlington Heights, Ill., reports revenue for the first six months of 1994 of $23.8 million - a 13 percent increase over the same period last year, the company says - but earnings for the period were down: $224,000 for the first six months of '94 versus $402,000 in the first half of 1993. In April, the company purchased the half of Market Facts of Canada Ltd., Toronto, that it didn't already own; associated accounting changes affected Market Facts' profits. Earnings were further diminished by increased payroll expenses and continuing investments in new technologies. Hardware and software updates also hurt profits. Nonetheless, a 7-cent dividend was paid to shareholders in August.
Chicago-based SPSS Inc. has acquired a former competitor: SYSTAT Inc., Evanston, Ill. Under the terms of the agreement, SPSS will pay approximately $600,000 in cash and 150,000 shares of common stock for SYSTAT. The primary market for SYSTAT's statistical software is the engineering and scientific fields, which rely on the advanced procedures and various technical charts integral to the company's software titles. SYSTAT products are available in DOS, Windows and Macintosh formats. SPSS says SYSTAT has more than 20,000 customers and recently has registered annual sales in the $3 million to $5 million range. Development teams working on the SPSS and SYSTAT product lines plan to use a common set of internal application programming interfaces, allowing features developed down the road to be shared. In the interim, SPSS plans to release SPSS 6.1 for Macintosh and SYSTAT 6.0 for DOS before the end of the year. Both the SPSS and SYSTAT product lines consist of a base system with optional add-on modules.
Digisoft Computers Inc. has moved. The company's new address is 310 Madison Ave., Suite 509, New York, NY 10017.
Socratic Technologies has opened in San Francisco. The company specializes in computer-based and interactive marketing research, using electronic forms of data collection and analysis. In noting what he hopes will prove the company's strengths, President Bill MacElroy points out the bias-free nature of computer-based research, the variety of tools the company will employ - disk-by-mail, PC-based computer-aided telephone interviewing, kiosk surveys, e-mail and laptop or personal digital assistant surveys - and the high response rates achieved when interviewees are presented with the op¬portunity to respond to electronic devices. The company is accessible through the Internet at sotech@netcom.com. Its address is PO Box 460863, San Francisco, CA 94146-0863.
The recently remodeled Prudential Center is the site of the downtown fieldwork Boston office. The address is 800 Boylston St., Boston, MA 02199.
Stephen Cook has founded Prescription for Research, a company specializing in customized consultation and training for marketing research. Prescription for Research works with management and employees at research companies, developing strategies for process and work flow, employee/client satisfaction and relations, teamwork and conflict resolution, staff development, sales automation and training, strategic planning and organizational function. The company also offers proposal development and evaluation, research company evaluation, and the development of criteria for forming partnerships. Prescription for Research's address is 40 Chestnut Ridge Road, Armonk, NY 10504-3001.
Omega Group Inc., formerly based in Haverford, Penn., has moved into a larger facility in nearby Bryn Mawr. The new office features state-of-the-art focus group and one-on-one interviewing facilities and a multimedia facility for training and consulting sessions. Omega's new address is 937 Haverford Road, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010-3819.