Ipsos MORI was the name of a

market research Market research is an organized effort to gather information about target markets and customers: know about them, starting with who they are. It is an important component of business strategy and a major factor in maintaining competitiveness. Mar ...

company based in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, England which is now known as Ipsos and still continues as the UK arm of the global

Ipsos Ipsos Group S.A. () (an acronym of ) is a multinational market research and consulting firm with headquarters in Paris, France. The company was founded in 1975 by Didier Truchot, Chairman of the company, and has been publicly traded on the P ...

group. It was formed by a merger of Ipsos UK and MORI in October 2005. The company is a member of the

British Polling Council The British Polling Council (BPC) is an association of market research companies whose opinion polls are regularly published or broadcast in media in the United Kingdom. The BPC was established in 2004, twelve years after the perceived failure ...

and

Market Research Society The Market Research Society is a professional body for market research based in London, England. It was established in 1946 at the offices of the London Press Exchange. It represents the views of its members to government and in the press. MRS ...

History

In 1946,

Mark Abrams Mark Abrams (27 April 1906 – 25 September 1994) was a British social scientist and market research expert who pioneered new techniques in statistical surveying and opinion polling. Background and education Mark Abrams was born Max Alexander ...

formed a market research company called Research Services Ltd. (RSL). RSL operated until 1991 when it was acquired by

, becoming Ipsos UK. MORI (Market and Opinion Research International) was founded in 1969 by

Robert Worcester Sir Robert Milton Worcester, (born 21 December 1933) is an American-born British pollster who is the founder of MORI (Market & Opinion Research International Ltd.) and a member and contributor to many voluntary organisations. He is a well-kno ...

. Robert Worcester stepped down from chairmanship of MORI in June 2005. Ipsos announced it would acquire MORI in October 2005 for £88 million, and would merge it with Ipsos UK. The merged company was named Ipsos MORI.

Methodology

Ipsos MORI's research is conducted via a wide range of methodologies, using

computer-assisted telephone interviewing Computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) is a telephone surveying technique in which the interviewer follows a script provided by a software application. It is a structured system of microdata collection by telephone that speeds up the c ...

(CATI), as well as face-to-face ( CAPI) and Internet surveys. Many telephone surveys use a system called

random digit dialing Random digit dialing (RDD) is a method for selecting people for involvement in telephone statistical surveys by generating telephone numbers at random. Random digit dialing has the advantage that it includes unlisted numbers that would be missed if ...

to interview a representative group of the population.

Controversies

In May 2013, ''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, w ...

'' reported that Ipsos MORI had negotiated an agreement with the EE mobile phone network to commercialise the data on that company's 23 million subscribers. The article stated that Ipsos MORI was looking to sell this data to the Metropolitan Police and other parties. The data included "gender, age, postcode, websites visited, time of day text is sent ndlocation of customer when call is made". When confronted by the newspaper, the Metropolitan Police indicated that they would not be taking the discussions any further. Ipsos MORI defended their actions, stressing that the company only received anonymised data, without any personally identifiable data on an individual customer, and underlining that reports are only ever made on aggregated groups of more than 50 customers.

References

External links

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Recent Research

Ipsos Global Website
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170803033429/https://www.ipsos.com/ , date=2017-08-03 Public opinion research companies Market research companies of the United Kingdom Companies based in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Polling organisations in the United Kingdom