Kantar, one of the world's leading market research companies owned by WPP, is keen to take its revenues from emerging markets to 50% from the current 35% in the next few years, chairman & CEO Eric Salama said in an interaction with Business Standard. India and China remain key in Kantar's emerging markets pack.
The move to increase revenues from areas such as research comes at a time when WPP chief executive Martin Sorrell is keen to grow his group's presence in non-advertising segments such as digital, public relations, retail and shopper marketing.
While WPP traditionally has been the dominant marketing communications group in Asia , rivals such as Paris-based Publicis and New-York-based Omnicom, which announced this July that they were merging, have in the last few years grown their business in this part of the world using acquisitions as a means to achieve it.
Salama, who is in India to review operations of the group's units , said the company will look at all possible levers including alliances, joint ventures and acquisitions to grow its business. "We are open to all avenues of growth in India though alliances and joint ventures is something we'd look at a bit more," he said. Areas where Kantar may look at acquisitions and alliances include verticals such as digital and social media, Salama said.
Kantar has an existing JV with rival Nielsen in India called TAM for measurement of TV viewership. Its other units such as IMRB, Millward Brown and TNS are strong players in consumer research in India though Nielsen runs the popular but often questioned retail audit here, which gives market share data to consumer goods companies.
IMRB, however, maps household consumption habits across product categories in India, which is also subscribed to by fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies. Salama says that Kantar will be increasing its investment in consumer panels in a bid to understand the purchase behaviour of people here. "India is increasingly becoming an important market for most of our clients. Understanding purchase behaviour therefore is key," he says. Besides, Kantar is also looking at online panels as a way to do research. "Our ambition is to move to digital on data collection and the faster we do it the better it is for us," Salama said.
Going digital on data collection comes when the methodology of research companies has increasingly come under scrutiny owing to inaccuracy of data. TAM, for instance, found itself in the eye of a storm last year when broadcaster NDTV dragged it as well as shareholders Kantar and Nielsen to court saying data provided by it was fudged. Nielsen, meanwhile, has frequently had run-ins with top FMCG as well as consumer durable companies who have accused it of providing inaccurate data on market share as well as growth of brands, markets and categories.
Salama says that research firms under Kantar are addressing these concerns by making their processes and systems more leak-proof and improving quality of reportage.
Analytics and neuro-science, Salama points out, are areas where Kantar is keen to beef up its service offerings in its drive to address the data needs of clients. "India has traditionally been a market where doing surveys is common as opposed to capturing behavioural data. However, the shift is slowly but steadily happening towards the latter. This demands that we have a deeper understanding of analytics and neuro-science. We are making the necessary investments in these areas," he adds.
