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Editor: Jan Roekens
Design: Niels Wagemaker
GfK stresses value of expertise in acquiring NOP World
Provided approval of competition authorities, the Germany-headquartered international market research agency GfK will acquire NOP World, the research group which has its centre of gravity in the UK and US. In addition to increasing its annual sales to more than euro 1 billion, Klaus L. Wübbenhorst, CEO of GfK Group, stressed the acquisition would significantly serve GfK’s interests in the area of human resources.
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Greenfield Online acquire Ciao AG for over $150m
Acquisition strengthens Greenfield’s presence in Europe
Greenfield Online, the US based online research firm, has acquired Ciao AG, the Munich-based online research company in a deal worth $154m (£82.5m). For 2004, Ciao AG recorded revenue of approximately $22.5m (£12m) with growth of approximately 78% over 2003. The Ciao AG client base grew by almost 100% in 2004 to 210 market research clients. Dean Wiltse, president and chief executive officer of Greenfield Online saysd that the acquisition of Ciao AG will consolidate the firm’s panel in Europe.
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Quality is key, for EFAMRO's new Director General
Lex Olivier:'Only together, we can change things'
In January of this year, Lex Olivier took over from Bryan Bates as EFAMRO's new Director General. He's looking forward to boosting the federation's reputation further, and making both research buyers and suppliers aware of the need for the highest quality standards.
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Spanish ANEIMO launches Procedure for Quality Recruitment
This year, Spanish-based ANEIMO is to start using the SACC System - Aneimo Procedure for Quality Recruitment: a unique system in Spain and the rest of the world, whose main objective is to guarantee the standard of qualitative surveys for all companies and research users by avoiding repeat respondent participation.
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Privacy legislation endangers telephone interviewing in Italy
The Italian Authority for data privacy recently issued a directive which entails that printed phone directories and yellow pages - as well as all means of electronic research of numbers and addresses - have the scope to allow ‘interpersonal communications. However, their use/access for advertising, promotion and other commercial purposes, explicitly including market research and opinion polls, is permitted only if the informants have provided explicit and specific permission.’
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Netherlands' MOA celebrates fifth anniversary
The MOA recently introduced the ‘Gouden Standaard’ (Gold Standard), a benchmark tool for the entire sector. In addition, the MOA is working on the Info Filter, the ‘do-not-call-list’ for the Netherlands: a fully automated system within which all agencies that carry out unannounced telephone research must take part, according to the new MOA conduct guidelines. Speaking of codes of conduct: a new code was introduced featuring an appeal committee to handle respondents’ complaints, and there is also a code currently being developed for electoral research.
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2004 - A good year for MR in the Czech Republic
It was really a hot autumn in the Czech Republic in 2004. There was a huge demand for research by MR clients. A late start possibly, but the result was that previous turnover estimates for the industry for 2004 (6%) were surpassed. Thirteen SIMAR member agencies (constituting 45% of the Czech industry) announced that their turnover had increased by 9.4 % compared to the year 2003. The total growth in 2004 will be in the region of 8 to 9%, which in monetary terms equals some 1600-1650 million CZK (between 50.5 and 52 million EUR).
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New Code of Conduct in the UK
In the UK there have recently been two major developments in terms of working practice. The MRS Professional Standards Committee is nearing completion of a major review of the Code of Conduct, the first significant revision for 10 years. The revised code will be launched in the course of 2005 with key changes in all sections. This reflects, for example, the fact that all methodologies pertaining to quantitative, qualitative, mystery shopping and observation/ethnography are now in one section.
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ARF Recommendation on spyware legislation
The issue of spyware and the collateral damage it causes has been a hot topic within the ARF Online Media Council. The problem affects all research companies and users of research who use the Internet for any sort of data collection: from panel companies, to survey companies, to audience measurement companies. Simply put, spyware has made people afraid of giving data online and undercut consumer trust in the medium.
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Industry Leaders Propose ‘Clearing House’ for market research
At their latest summit in Geneva, leaders of the international market research industry have agreed on a series of measures aimed at strengthening the profession. Establishing an online ‘clearing house’ for national market research associations to exchange information and discuss new developments and strategies is one of them. Leaders also commissioned a working group to find ways for the industry to provide accurate financial data sooner in the year and launched a pilot project to enforce industry standards by setting up a disciplinary system in - initially - five countries. The disciplinary system will be based on the current German disciplinary mechanism.
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GfK stresses value of expertise in acquiring NOP World
Our employees and their knowledge and expertise are our most important asset. We look forward to welcoming the highly-qualified NOP World staff to the worldwide GfK network,? Wübbenhorst said in a statement. ?With the acquisition of NOP World, we are significantly expanding our global position,? he added. NOP has a staff of approximately 1,500. Recruiting and retaining highly skilled market researchers has been pinpointed by market research leaders as being one of the industry?s major challenges and concerns over the next few years.
GfK, which ranks among the top 10 market research companies in the world, reached agreement on the acquisition in mid-April with United Business Media, the British owner of NOP. The purchase price amounts to GBP 383 million (appr. euro 550 million). The acquisition of NOP World will expand GfK's operations in the UK and the US as well as Italy. It will further strengthen its business in sectors such as Media, Healthcare and Automotive, making GfK one of the largest market research companies in the world. NOP World, which was established in 1957, is a leading provider of both syndicated and custom primary research and consulting support services. In 2004, it achieved sales of euro 321 million and an operating profit of euro 35 million.
GfK said it expects the acquisition to be finalized by late May, after approval of both the United States and German competition authorities. The purchase price will become payable in cash.
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Greenfield Online acquire Ciao AG for over $150m
Acquisition strengthens Greenfield’s presence in Europe
Greenfield Online, headquartered in Wilton, CT, U.S., is a leading independent provider of Internet survey solutions to the global marketing research industry. The company has built and actively manages the Greenfield Online panel, a 100% double opt-in Internet-based panel of over 5.7 million individuals residing in households containing an estimated 14.8 million people.
CIAO AG, headquartered in Munich, Germany, was founded in 1999. The company has 150 employees across six European offices in Munich, London, Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam and Timisoara, Romania, as well as a small office with 5 employees in the US.
Greenfield President and CEO Dean Wiltse: “From a revenue perspective, we believe Ciao AG is the largest independent survey research provider in Europe with an established online community that spans 15 countries and a large, diverse client base. With Ciao AG, we have not only substantially increased our international panel strength but we have also gained an innovative online community platform that we plan to adopt in the U.S. due to the success it has delivered for Ciao AG in terms of their ability to recruit, retain and entertain panelists. In addition, Ciao AG's experienced European management team will help us accelerate the growth of Greenfield Online's business globally."
Fred Paul, Ciao AG's Co-CEO says: "Ciao AG's online community sites in Europe have over 10 million unique visitors per month, across five different countries (Germany, France, UK, Italy and Spain). Ciao AG has successfully created an interactive community with participants actively engaged in taking surveys, writing product reviews and giving their opinions. This community provides Ciao AG access to panelists who visit the online community sites, sign up to become part of the panel, as well as provide their opinions in the form of product reviews. It is this community that helped Ciao AG to become the market leader for Internet surveys in Europe, delivering broad scale and scope for European projects due to their access to survey respondents across multiple European countries. Through the acquisition, Greenfield Online has significantly increased its reach across Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, The Netherlands, Poland, Belgium, Austria, and Switzerland."
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Quality is key, for EFAMRO's new Director General
Lex Olivier: 'Only together, we can change things'
The fact that Lex Olivier was one of the founder Board members of EFAMRO, back in 1994, fits perfectly with both his character and way of thinking. During his 30 years in the field of market research, he’s always been a firm supporter of achieving results through cooperation. He was the President of the Dutch Trade organisation of Marketing Research Agencies (VMO) between 1990 and 1996; a period crowned with the prestigious Marijn Veraart Award. During this time, he presided over the introduction of a mandatory ISO 9000 certification for all VMO members. He’s worked on both the client side, as Head of the Marketing Research Department at v.d. Bergh Foods (Currently Unilever Bestfood), and the agency side, as CEO of the Centrum van Marketing Analyses (now Millward Brown) and later as CEO of Research International Netherlands. He is currently working with Lightspeed Research, the Kantar agency specialized in online surveys. Gaining a wider perspective of buyer and provider along the way, Olivier is ideally equipped to rise above the different interests, and make peace in the face of fierce competition. He explains his knack for impartial solutions, by the relatively small Dutch market he grew up in. “Even though, obviously, agencies compete in The Netherlands, it’s still a small community, where professionals run into each other all the time. Therefore, they are more likely to exchange ideas freely. Thankfully, within EFAMRO I witnessed this philosophy increase internationally over the years. There is now a common understanding that only together, we can change things.”
Olivier has his work cut out for him. Many international developments call for unified answers. Under his guidance, he hopes EFAMRO can come up with these answers in the years ahead. For instance, the expanding EU, with its many new member states, calls for an accelerated integration within the international market research network. “Before the different industries in each country will start to reinvent the wheel, EFAMRO can offer a helping hand, and demonstrate how things were done in other countries. This way, we also expect EFAMRO to gain new members.” Growth is one goal, but primarily , EFAMRO’s voice will need to be heard in Brussels; if only to safeguard market research’s position as an industry of scientific research, rather than being confused with direct marketeers. Privacy legislation is high up on Olivier’s agenda. “It’s obvious how international legislation is converging more and more. Soon, there will be no differences between French and German privacy laws. This is were EFAMRO will increasingly come into its own.” Olivier is pleased that the notion that the federation needs to become more visible and audible, is rapidly permeating through the organisation. He points to this e-zine as one way of gaining exposure. “There is a stronger than ever sense within EFAMRO to put real goals on the agenda. Members realise that time and budgets are limited, so we’ll have to be efficient and not get in each other’s way. Individual initiatives must be supported at all times. For too long, EFAMRO has remained relatively unknown within the industry. A pity, because this is an agency-supported organisation, representing big interests, and therefore we’re able to force certain decisions. We must now work very hard on a reputation within the industry, reflecting our true status.”
Considering web-based developments within the market research industry, it’s not surprising that one of Lex Olivier’s major objectives will be the introduction of quality standards for working with access panels, focusing on verifiable implementation. The EFAMRO Quality Standards for Access panels are largely derived from the 2005 ESOMAR guidelines regarding online surveys, and built on the development and implementation of the global ISO/TCC 225 Quality Standard. “An essential measure, because online developments cross borders, making legislation difficult. More than in any other field, we need to set international standards here, averting unfair pricing competition and below-par quality.” Under Olivier’s predecessor, Bryan Bates, EFAMRO set an objective to develop a quality norm. “Bryan’s biggest achievement was that he realised the need for international cooperation twelve years ago. And he managed to make a growing number of members aware of this. He was also instrumental in developing the EMRQS (EFAMRO Market Research Quality Standard) and the ISO/TCC 225 Quality Standard.” As Bates’ successor, Olivier promises to focus on the end users of market research, when he introduces the new Quality Standards. “After all, they buy the products, so they need to know that we, the EFAMRO agencies, guarantee the highest possible quality. They must also realise that buying low-quality research, can lead to disasters. It’s my task to guard these buyers from such disasters.”
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Spanish ANEIMO launches Procedure for Quality Recruitment
This system guarantees full compliance with the established requirements regarding repeated attendance, i.e. it ensures the non-repetition of respondents in studies organized by ANEIMO members.
The SACC System works via a preventive manner, by eliminating the participation of people who do not fulfil established timing requirements in focus groups or interviews. It also provides information on how to take the necessary measures to improve recruitment systems.
The Quality Recruitment System was first put to use in mid 2004 by way of trials. Since then, its applications have been improved and the number of companies using the system has increased significantly. Currently, it is fully operative, and is already proving to be both efficient and effective.
The implementation of this project, a leader in Spain and one of the first of its kind worldwide, is one of the many initiatives carried out by ANEIMO in the field of quality improvement. The main goal of these initiatives is the establishment of norms and implementation of tools that truly facilitate and guarantee full compliance with regard to quality standards among Association members.
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Privacy legislation endangers telephone interviewing in Italy
In addition, the directive requests all Italian telephone companies ‘contact millions of users, asking them to make significant choices which will affect their private lives’ within the next few months. The Authority has drawn up a standard form that telephone companies must use. The form first clearly addresses people’s rights and proceeds to ask for a number of authorisations: citizens will have the option to decide whether or not they wish to appear in the phone directories (this was very difficult in Italy in the past, as you had to motivate and justify the reason for not wanting to be listed) and in which of the following manners they would like to be listed:
- solely name and phone number (they can opt for the full first name or only the initial);
- also their postal address (solely the city, solely the street, or the street, street number and city);
- also their mobile number and e-mail address (if any);
- also their title (prof., etc.) and/or the profession;
- also their business address (phone, street, etc.).
ASSIRM has taken action requiring the Authority to modify its directive but the outcome of this action is very dubious given the fact that the directive has already been issued and published. The Authority has already informally answered, stating that if the situation is different in other EU nations, this is solely due to the fact that they have not yet implemented the EU Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communication, and that it is their view that other countries will soon follow the example set by Italy.
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Netherlands’ MOA celebrates fifth anniversary
In the latter part of last year, the first ever Master Talent Award was presented to the most talented researcher. The award is designed to help promote the profession, also among young researchers. Last year’s award went to Annemieke Temming of the Dutch IgloMora Group.
Two key MOA events will define this year for marketeers and market researchers, namely the Trends en Hypes anniversary conference on June 15th, and the Marketing Information Event, which is held in November. The latter attracted a visitor total of 1250 last year, and brings together all of the trade organisations from marketing, research, media, advertising, and CRM sectors.
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2004 - A good year for MR in the Czech Republic
SIMAR continued to prepare the newly recommended quality standards, which now concern the interviewing of children and teens, and especially the use of Internet research. The Czech Republic implements many EU laws (one of them being the anti-spam law). SIMAR had a satisfactory discussion with the authorities regarding the position of market and opinion research and its segregation from all commercial activities, such as direct marketing. In the near future, additional responsibilities concerning the law, implementation, and respective discussions will be addressed.
SIMAR is currently preparing its Industry Statistics 2004. Not an easy task, since many of the non-SIMAR-members are not prepared to provide data concerning their turnover and its former structure, possibly due to competition elsewhere. SIMAR hopes that ESOMAR and EFAMRO agreements will assist in helping to procure this information.
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New Code of Conduct in the UK
The International Standards Organisation (ISO) has published a draft international standard for market, opinion and social research. The primary aim is to set common minimum standards across countries and to harmonise various national standards, reflecting an increasingly global market research industry.
The various UK market research industry bodies are engaged in a process called ‘The Way Ahead’ which is working towards developing a unified representative approach to government, legislative bodies and the ‘outside world’.
Gossip abounds within the industry as to the future of NOP World, one of the top 10 pollsters in the world. Lord Hollick, CEO of United Business Media (which owns NOP World) is thought to be planning to sell the company before relinquishing ownership of UBM in April. The big question is who will be the buyer and how much will it sell for?
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ARF Recommendation on spyware legislation
In reaction to the problem, there has been legislative activity (proposed bills) as well as marketplace solutions (Anti-Spyware stripping software). In both cases, the proposed solutions have posed new challenges - mislabelling some research applications as spyware and confusing the issues. Both the ARF, and CMOR, have been active on this issue. ARF developed an official recommendation on the issue of spyware and issued it recently. Spyware legislation (HR 29) has now moved from the House to the Senate.
Listening to the research community as well as others, drafters of the HR 29 have specifically identified the acts of spyware and created a bill that protects consumers as well as the use of cookies.
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Industry Leaders Propose ‘Clearing House’ for market research
The measures come in addition to previous steps taken to revitalize the market research industry. Since January 2001, a series of meetings has been taking place - initially dubbed Research Leaders Summit (RELEAS), later World Industry Network (WIN) - aimed at discussing how to strengthen market research. During previous meetings, leaders decided, among other things, to set up the Alliance for Research, a representative body for market research in Brussels, earmarked to prevent the EU from adopting restrictive privacy legislation that could hurt the freedom to conduct research. Since 2003, national associations have been closely engaged in the WIN process.
At the latest WIN meeting in January in Geneva, leaders said the clearing house could increase market research associations’ impact and efficiency in the industry and indicated it could also be a welcome substitute for some of the national associations operations, in times where many associations are struggling with decreasing resources. CEOs of major research agencies and senior executives within research departments of major companies such as Unilever, PepsiCo en Philip Morris also agreed to urge national market research associations to harmonize national codes and standards. They said differences between national codes and standards unnecessarily complicated conducting cross-border research.
On a different note, the American Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) said it would design a communication plan in order to demonstrate the added value of market research to corporate decision makers, legislators, and students of business schools. In order to provide the WIN initiative with a sustainable structure, a core team of research leaders is in the process of designing a WIN business plan. The next WIN meeting to update associations is scheduled for September, during the ESOMAR Congress in Cannes.
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