Kantar Group

Kantar

Industry	Market Research
Founded	1993 (As the Market Research, Insight and Consultancy Division of WPP Group plc)
Headquarters	London
Key people	Eric Salama, (CEO, Kantar and CEO, TNS)[1] Robert Bowtell (Chief Financial Officer) Janine Hawkins (CEO of Added Value) Eileen Campbell (CEO of Millward Brown) Jean-Michel Portier (CEO of Kantar Media)
Products	Market Research Insight Consultancy
Parent	WPP plc
Subsidiaries	Added Value Center Partners IMRB International Kantar Health Kantar Japan Kantar Media Kantar Operations Kantar Retail Kantar Worldpanel Lightspeed Research Millward Brown The Futures Company TNmS Media Korea TNS
Website	www.kantar.com

Kantar, based in UK, was founded in 1993 as the Market Research, Insight and Consultancy Division of WPP plc, a London-based public company. It is a network of 13 specialist companies, with around 28,500 employees working in 100 countries across various research and consultancy disciplines. Eric Salama is the current Chief Executive Officer.

The group claims its services are used by over half of the Fortune Top 500 companies. It was the second largest global market research company in 2009, with annual revenue of about $4 billion. It is consistently a Honomichl Top 50 company in the U.S.

Top 9 of the Market Research Sector 2009

Rank	Company	Sales in 2009 (million USD)	Growth in %
1	Nielsen Company	5,000.0	2.6
2	Kantar Group	2,000	2.5
3	IMS Health Inc.	1,958.6	8.9
4	GfK AG	1,397.3	5.4
5	Ipsos	1,077.0	6.5
6	Synovate	739.6	9.5
7	IRI	665.0	6.6
8	Westat	425.8	0.8
9	Arbitron	400.0	5.9

Millward Brown

Millward Brown; based in New York, New York, was founded in Warwick, England in 1973 and acquired by WPP Group in 1989. Millward Brown is a global research agency specializing in advertising, marketing communications, media and brand equity research. Millward Brown works across a range of industries and categories, and has a number of specialist practices: BPRI Group (a global practice specializing in B2B research), Dynamic Logic (a global leader in measuring the impact of digital marketing effectiveness), Firefly Millward Brown (Millward Brown's global qualitative network), Millward Brown Optimor (Millward Brown's strategy consultancy practice that helps companies maximize the financial returns on their brand and marketing investments), and the Neuroscience Practice.

IMRB International

IMRB International (formerly “Indian Market Research Bureau”) is a multi-country market research, survey and business consultancy firm established in 1970 that offers a range of syndicated data and customized research services. With over 1200 employees, IMRB is one of the largest providers of market research in India in an industry estimated to be worth a minimum of $ 187 million. As the oldest extant market research company in India, IMRB has been responsible for establishing the first and only household panel, the first television audience measurement system and the first radio panel in the country and has played a key role in the development of market research in India.IMRB International's specialised areas are consumer markets, industrial marketing, business to business marketing, social marketing and rural marketing.

Kantar Health

Kantar Heath, a global consultancy and marketing insights organization serving the pharmaceutical, biotech and diagnostics and devices industries, was formed in 2009 from Consumer Health Sciences, MattsonJack, TNS Healthcare and Ziment. The company has more than 40 offices throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa.

Kantar Media

Kantar Media offers a range of media insights and audience measurement services through the analysis of print, radio, TV, internet, cinema, mobile, social media, and outdoor worldwide. Kantar Media was formed from WPP Group’s acquisition of TNS Media and KMR Media in 2008. Kantar Media became Kantar Group’s rebranded insight, media evaluation and audience measurement company.

Kantar Video

Founded in 2010, Kantar Video is headquartered in New York, and is an online video syndication, tracking, and measurement service utilizing proprietary technology to serve agencies, media companies, advertisers, and content creators. The platform, according to the press release put out by WPP, will be called Videolytics (TM). According to the same press release, the launch of Kantar Video was concurrent with the launch of another Kantar product "Echo Video" which will measure the effects of viral videos on consumer attitude and online behavior.

Lightspeed Research

Lightspeed Research (LSR) was founded in 2000 and is headquartered in Warren, New Jersey. The company operates in North America, Europe, and Asia. LSR provides global online market research services, specializing in using the Internet as a data collection platform to provide research through building and maintaining panels subject to quality and representative sampling standards. Specialty panels range across industry sectors such as financial services, health care, business-to-business, automotive, family and more. LSR also provides custom panels to address specific client needs. In 2007, Lightspeed Research conducted over 20 million online surveys for clients.

Its network of proprietary panels and accredited panel partners LSR can provide access to more than 5.5 million panel members across 34 countries in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Consumer panels are available in the USA, Canada, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Japan, China, Korea and Australia – providing access to adults, teenagers, kids and other specialty audiences.

Added Value

In October 2004, three Kantar Group companies – Added Value, Icon Brand Navigation and Diagnostic Research – combined under the Added Value (AV) name. Added Value focuses on brand marketing, consumer insight, innovation and communications optimization. Core services are setting future direction (cultural and trend analysis); identifying market opportunities (market segmentation and mindset mapping, brand portfolio management); strengthening brand equity (brand evaluation, diagnosis and strategy creation); innovation (ethnography, ideas generation and development); evaluating ideas (marketing mix optimization, concept evaluation); optimizing communications (decoding and planning, copy testing); and communications performance optimization (planning, tracking, and spending optimization).^{[clarification needed]}

DR Added Value conducts consumer and business-to-business research across a number of product and industry categories. Major services offered are copy-testing, brand and advertising tracking, consumer and market segmentation, product design and customer satisfaction. IconAddedValue provides market research and consulting services, including brand communications, product research, brand tracking and customer satisfaction studies, with offices in four countries. In addition, the firm offers support for advertising agency selection; coaching in brand management, communications development and agency management; and tailored seminars and workshops for defining brand identity. Its research activities are built around a brand value management structure with four brand components; analytics, strategy, implementation and monitoring.^[2]

TNS acquisition

In 2008, Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS), after its failed merge talks with GfK, was acquired by WPP and included it in the Kantar Group portfolio.

In February 2009, Kantar merged TNS and Research International. With Kantar's subsequent purchase of Global Market Insite, TNS/Lightspeed Research/GMI is now the world’s largest custom research agency.^{[citation needed]}

References

1. ^ STUART ELLIOTT (March 21, 2006). "ADVERTISING; New Rules of Engagement". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05E3D81F31F932A15750C0A9609C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all. Retrieved 2009-08-26. 
2. ^ Honomichl Top 50, June 16, 2005

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External links

• Kantar
• Kantar Health
• Kantar Japan
• Kantar Media