Kantar Merges Retail and Shopper Arms

WPP-owned Kantar is to combine the resources of Kantar Retail with its TNS Retailer & Shopper practice, to form a new organisation offering a single source of retail and shopper expertise.

From January, the combined company will operate under the Kantar Retail name, and be led by joint Global CEOs Phil Smiley, Kantar Retail's CEO EMEA ASPAC, and Steve Pattinson, who currently serves as the division's CEO Americas Market Insights. They will be supported by a board consisting of senior TNS and Kantar Retail personnel.

The merged division will provide a wide range of retail and shopper-focused services including custom and syndicated shopper research and insights, retail and channel trends and intelligence, retail virtual reality, shopper marketing, category and go-to-market consultancy, retail and purchase behaviour analytics and organisational performance.

Kantar CEO Eric Salama comments: 'By bringing this expertise together, we will strengthen our ability to connect insights to solutions that will deliver market impact for our clients. We have aligned the best retail and shopper capabilities from across our network to deliver comprehensive retail consultancy - based on retail and shopper insight- to our manufacturer and retail clients.'

Web sites: www.kantarretail.com and www.tnsglobal.com .