Tony Cowling
Chairman TNS

Cross-Tab’s booth at the CASRO annual conference in Toronto was under the spotlight. Cross-Tab presented to the North American MR community an excellent value proposition, for their outsourcing and paneling needs.

The theme of the conference was to explore the issues related to growth prospects for research companies, including approaches to growth from the large and small research company perspective, partnering ventures, utilization of staff, financial growth, and global expansion.

Executives from major research organizations expressed that they are considering offshoring of research processes as a strategic initiative to not only reduce costs but also as a platform to support the growth plans of their organizations, develop new competencies, and strengthen their long term competitive positions.

The CASRO 30th Annual Conference was a members-only conference. The conference was held between 28th and 30th September in Toronto, Canada. Around 300 delegates from around 200 companies had attended the conference.

Cross-Tab launches Panel of IT Professionals

Cross-Tab has recently commissioned a dedicated online panel of Information Technology (IT) professionals in India. The country has around 1 million IT professionals out of around 15 million worldwide. India is a hotbed of activity for the global IT industry and is one of the major exporters of such services worldwide. IT industry dynamics in India influence the global industry to a great extent. All major international IT companies are interested in understanding attitudes and behaviors of the Indian IT professionals.

Cross-Tab has provided these research buyers with an effective and easy way to reach the IT industry community in India. Cross-Tab’s panel of 90,000 IT professionals is spread across all major cities in India. The panel consists of professionals from, different functional areas – technical, techno-managerial, non-technical, senior management etc; different levels of seniority - entry level to top management; and across age groups.

As a next stage this panel will be expanded across the Asia-Pacific region and then worldwide.

Asia, Outsourcing & Online Research are the future of Market Research

At the Brighton conference of the BMRA (British Market Research Association), TNS Chairman Tony Cowling stated that “ You have to be in Asia, be outsourcing, and be using the Internet if you want to be in the future of MR ”. Andrew hills of Financial Times emphasized that quality, speed and originality must be the guiding principles for market researchers, if they want to beat the competition coming from various unconventional mediums.

Peter Kellner, Chairman of online survey firm YouGov, stressed the rise and rise of online research – mainly at the expense of telephone interviewing. Cris Tarrant, Chair/MD of Business Development Research Consultants (BDRC) conceded that being a generalist medium-sized company is to be ‘dead in the water', and that the smaller companies must have a specialty in order to succeed.

Ipsos buys MORI

Ipsos is buying MORI for £88 million. MORI will merge with Ipsos UK forming a single company called Ipsos MORI. The merger is expected to take effect in February 2006.

The purchase will almost double Ispos' UK revenue. Ipsos is also anticipating annual cost savings of £1.2m as a result of the deal. Both the companies have recently been experiencing healthy growth: Ipsos at 14% and MORI at 10%.

The merger will strengthen Ipsos' expertise in Public Affairs and Loyalty while MORI's private sector side of business will be benefited from Ipsos' strong global network. The merged business will have a powerful Public Affairs offering.

WPP drops plans to bid for Aegis

The London-based advertising giant, WPP, has dropped its plans to take over UK rival Aegis. WPP had been considering a joint offer for Aegis with San Francisco, California-based private-equity firm, Hellman & Friedman.

The advertising giant said in a statement that Aegis Group's board was not interested in the combined proposal by WPP Group and Hellman & Friedman, and that it had decided against making an offer.

After the announcement, Aegis shares fell 3.3% while WPP shares gained 2%.