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| Sunday, 13 October 2002 |
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ACNIELSEN Lanka commences operations by Farah Macan Markar ORG-MARG SMART, Sri Lanka's second oldest market research group, which was bought up by ACNIELSEN in April, announced itself as ACNIELSEN Lanka (Pvt) Ltd., which became legalised last week. SMART was formed in Sri Lanka in 1994. In February 1997, it formed a joint venture with ORG-MARG and became ORG-MARG SMART, the largest research company in South Asia. India was its base while its research activities were also conducted in Nepal and Bangladesh. In 1999 VNU Media Measurement and Information Group bought over the interests of ORG-MARG SMART. In June 2000 VNU bought over ACNIELSEN. In December 2000 it put all its research companies under the umbrella of ACNIELSEN. The company has a retail store audit service that goes to 2000 retail outlets island-wide. It has 54 categories. The data is collected from these outlets on a monthly basis and reports are prepared representing the whole country. The information is made available for marketeers and serves both local and foreign companies. ACNIELSEN Media Ratings will be launched here. One of the services offered will be Peoplemeter Service, an electronic device which automatically detects the channel which is being viewed, and stores it in its memory chip. Equity, which looks into customer and employee satisfaction; Winning Brands, used to measure a brand's health; and Bases, which is used for market estimation, the volume of sales of a product and how much advertising and distribution will be necessary, are some of the modules. Johann Bandaranayake, Assistant General Manager ACNIELSEN said: "ACNIELSEN will connect Sri Lanka to 104 countries where NIELSEN is present. Sri Lanka will get access to markets worldwide, be able to conduct research on other countries and find out information on foreign products". On the company's competitor Lanka Market Research Bureau Ltd. (LMRB), he said: "LMRB has ben here for a long time. However, we feel we can catch up with them with our technology. We do not see LMRB as a threat to us, but as a welcome competitor". When asked about ACNIELSEN's entry to the local market, Nihal De Silva, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of LMRB said: "Our company emphasises a lot on technical expertise. This is something we have built up over the years and we pride ourselves for our technical excellence, providing accurate and honest information. I think the competition is good for both sides and will definitely boost the industry. However, the market here is rather small so perhaps it would be better if both companies introduce new products and specialise in different matters". LMRB has been in Sri Lanka for 21 years. It is part of KANTAR, a worldwide market research group whose holding company is the WPP Group, said to be the largest marketing service group in the world. |
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