Ipsos Hires Leader for Mystery Shopping Offer

Former Bare International Managing Director Sonul Verdia is joining Ipsos as Executive Director of its Mystery Shopping Services. He starts immediately and reports to India CEO Amit Adarkar.

In eight years at Bare, Verdia (pictured) worked in a number of roles including General Manager, India, Middle East and Africa. He began his career with American Express in 2000 and spent a decade across different departments including Corporate Customer Services and Risk Management. He holds a degree in Operations and Strategy from IE Business School at the University of Madrid, Spain; a Master's degree in Commerce from the University of Mumbai; and a Bachelor's degree in Commerce and a Diploma in Software Engineering from Aptech University.

According to Adarkar, the new recruit 'comes with a rich and deep experience in providing counsel to marketers in some of the key competitive global markets covering service, appearance, in-store promotions and product placement'. He stresses the importance of mystery shopping as an 'independent, efficient and agile' assessment, giving marketers a better handle on ROI, and adds: 'Mystery Shopping is becoming more specialized now. Apart from the traditional methods of face to face, telephonic and online, it is being done using mobile apps, audio and video recording. Ipsos also provides web and live mystery shops, micro shops and experiential mystery shopping. There are dashboards, drill down analytics, hot alerts and customizable reports, all in real time for timely action'.

The group, which recently reported organic growth of 1.5% in first half revenue of EUR 786m, has since announced it will buy GfK's Custom Research business for EUR 105m in cash with nearly 1,000 GfK employees moving across. Web site: www.ipsos.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.