GfK Group

The GfK Group is one of the world's largest international market research organizations with its head office based in Nuremberg, Germany. GfK is the abbreviation for the German name Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung (Society for Consumer Research); while in English the letters are understood to stand for Growth from Knowledge. All GfK companies employ advanced market research technologies. A special department of GfK working in close cooperation with the University of Erlangen is permanently engaged in developing new research instruments for studying goods and services over their entire lifecycle. GfK's best known branded products are Navigator, Target Positioning, ATS, Price Challenger, Ad*Vantage, and LoyaltyPlus, as well more than 20 other instruments and techniques.

The GfK Group's History:

1925 Institut für Wirtschafts-beobachtung der deutschen Fertigware is founded
1934 Company GfK-Nürnberg e.V is registered
1949 GfK reopens in Germany
1967 The GfK Group becomes an international company opening up subsidiaries first in Europe and then in the rest of the world.

At present, the GfK Group's total annual turnover is in excess of a billion euros (including NOP World). Nearly 7,600 employees now work for GfK at 130 companies in 63 countries across the world. This makes it possible for the Group to conduct integrated research studies on both European and worldwide scales. In Central and Eastern Europe the Group has 16 subsidiaries in a total of twelve countries, which makes the company indisputably the leading provider of market research services in this region.

All GfK companies feature five major business divisions with centrally coordinated activities. These are Custom Research (Ad Hoc), ConsumerScan, Retail&Technology Audit (Non-Food Tracking), and Media & Internet Research.

Ad Hoc Worldwide operates in 88 countries and is the seventh largest in the world. This division offers its clients exclusive research services using both quantitative and qualitative methods, as well as the company's branded techniques and instruments. The centralized coordination of projects allows research studies based on uniform approaches and standardized instruments to be conducted on an international scale (for example, the Eurobus survey is conducted on a regular basis in 36 countries).

Retail&Technology Audit (Non-food Tracking) is a panel of retail outlets providing their sales information, which is then processed using a special software package and analysed using an innovative comprehensive approach patented by GfK. The company has been conducting the research in most countries across the world, and it is now a leading provider of information and consultancy on the sales of products in various sectors of the durable goods market worldwide.

ConsumerScan is a panel of households recording their everyday purchase data. This information allows clients to assess the consumption volumes of a product or a brand and identify changes in consumer buying habits that cannot be tracked in other types of panel research. GfK is now the sole provider of this research service in Eastern Europe.

Media Research possessing as it does equipment for television viewer assessment in seventh countries (over 16 000 households): Switzerland, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Ukraine is now Europe's No.1 company in this field.