Kantar TNS is a global

market research Market research is an organized effort to gather information about target markets and customers. It involves understanding who they are and what they need. It is an important component of business strategy and a major factor in maintaining com ...

and market information group with offices in over 80 countries. Formerly listed on the

London Stock Exchange The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange based in London, England. the total market value of all companies trading on the LSE stood at US$3.42 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Paul's Cath ...

and a constituent of the

FTSE 250 Index The Financial Times Stock Exchange 250 Index, also called the FTSE 250 Index, FTSE 250, or, informally, the "Footsie 250" , is a stock market index that consists of the 101st to the 350th mid-cap blue chip companies listed on the London Stock ...

, the firm was acquired by WPP Group for £1.6 billion in October 2008, when it became part of WPP's Kantar Group. In April 2019, Kantar announced that it was unifying all its legacy brands (including Kantar TNS) and consolidating all services and offerings under the Kantar brand name.

History

The history of TNS as a market research company began in 1946 with the establishment of National Family Opinion (NFO) in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

.- A History of Success Delivering Market Research & Insight
; TNS Global online; accessed March 2019 Since then, various

mergers and acquisitions Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of a company, business organization, or one of their operating units is transferred to or consolidated with another entity. They may happen through direct absorpt ...

involving large companies from the US, Europe, and Asia Pacific eventually became the Taylor Nelson Sofres group.

Six original companies

The 1960s saw the establishment of the six main companies that today form part of TNS. Starting with NFO in the 1940s, Intersearch in the US in 1960; then AGB in the UK in 1962; Sofres in France in 1963; Frank Small Associates (FSA) in Australia in 1964; Taylor Nelson in the UK in 1965. Over the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, these companies grew significantly as individual businesses. The 1990s and early years of the new millennium saw consolidation in the industry. In 1991 AGB and Taylor Nelson merged to create Taylor Nelson AGB. In 1992, Sofres acquired Secodip. In 1997, Sofres combined with FSA. In 1997, Sofres acquired Intersearch and then merged with Taylor Nelson AGB, thus creating TNS. In 1998 Taylor Nelson Sofres acquired Chilton Market Research, followed by CMR in 2000, and the NFO WorldGroup in 2003. In 2006, a class action lawsuit was filed against TNS alleging that it failed to disclose major financial information in a registration statement associated with the company's secondary offering. The TNS Group continues to grow, mainly by acquiring small research companies to strengthen its position in markets in which it already has a presence. For example, in December 2007, TNS acquired Landis Strategy & Innovation in the United States, a specialist research-based consultancy. In the same month, TNS announced that it had reached agreement to increase its ownership of LatinPanel Holdings from 33.3% to 100%. TNS was formerly a joint venture partner with the NPD Group and the IBOPE Group in this continuous consumer panel business serving Latin America operating in 15 countries in Latin America, and covering 96% of the region’s GDP, providing local and international clients with access to a household research panel across the packaged groceries, toiletries and cosmetics, fresh foods and textile retail markets. In early March 2008, TNS announced the merging of its North American operating units TNS Media Intelligence, TNS Media Research with the recently acquired firms Compete and Cymfony to create TNS Media Group. On 29 April 2008 TNS announced that it was in talks to merge with German market research company GfK. The announcement was followed in May by two conditional offers from WPP to buy TNS for a combination of cash and shares, both of which were rejected by TNS’s board. The hostile WPP bid led to GfK and TNS abandoning their merger plans. GfK sought without success to find backing for a rival offer, leaving WPP’s hostile bid as the only one on the table. On 9 October 2008 WPP declared that its latest bid had been successful and that it was buying TNS for $1.93bn. TNS was bought by WPP's Kantar Group. Many Kantar subsidiary companies underwent restructuring and rebranding. In 2013, TNS acquired Sinotrust Market Research, a leading market research and consulting company in China. On 8 September 2016, TNS was rebranded as Kantar TNS. On 2 April 2019, Kantar announced that it was retiring the names of its brands (including Kantar TNS) and consolidating all services and offerings under the Kantar brand name.

Operations

TNS NIPO is a Dutch survey agency. Together with

Synovate Synovate was a market research company with more than 100 offices in 62 countries. It was acquired by Ipsos in 2011 which combined to be the third largest in the world. Company history Synovate was one of the largest firms specializing in custo ...

(formerly Interview-NSS) and Surveys from Maurice de Hond ( Peil.nl), it is one of the top three (

political Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...

) survey agencies in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

. In June 2013, TNS NIPO received the MOAward for Market Research Office of the Year. TNS is structured around specific areas of marketing: Brand & Communication; Innovation & Product Development; Retail & Shopper; Customer Experience; Employee Engagement; Qualitative; Automotive; and Political & Social. TNS separates its worldwide operations in over eighty three countries into a number of regional divisions:

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

; Northern

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

; Southern Europe;

Asia Pacific Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

; Latin America; and Africa, Mediterranean and Middle East.

Methods

TNS NIPO has a database of thousands of screened

respondent A respondent is a person who is called upon to issue a response to a communication made by another. The term is used in legal contexts, in survey methodology, and in psychological conditioning. Legal usage In legal usage, this term specificall ...

s. For each survey a selection is made from the

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

and submitted to the respondents. TNS NIPO's goal is to have the respondents surveyed once every six weeks. TNS NIPO uses software from NIPO Software for its research surveys. The five following methods of research are used: *CATI:

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 co ...

*CAPI: computer-assisted personal interviewing (by interviewer) *CASI: computer-assisted self interviewing (respondent receives questions via modem) *CAWI:

computer-assisted web interviewing Computer-assisted web interviewing (CAWI) is an Internet surveying technique in which the interviewee follows a script provided in a website. The questionnaires are made in a program for creating web interviews. The program allows for the questionn ...

(respondent visit site) *Qualitative research The appropriate research form depends on the subject and target group.

Logo

In 2003, when company went from being Taylor Nelson Sofres with several local names to one unified TNS, a new logo was designed. Wolff Olins was the agency behind the 2003 rebrand. Daniella Meirelles, a Brand Consultant at Wolff Olins was the one who brought the global project to the agency. Then in early 2012 the old logo was altered further.

References