Strategic acquisition of digital shopper research specialist

Nuremberg, 12 August 2015 - GfK acquires NORM Research & Consulting AB, a Sweden-based market research company specialized in virtual shopper research. Their core product is a software that simulates shopping environments for various market research purposes.

Simstore, NORM's cloud-based software, enables effective analysis of shoppers' behaviour.
With the research results, clients can optimize their pricing, assortment, packaging, planograms and product launches. Simstore creates photo-realistic two- and three-dimensional shopping environments for market research purposes.

Simstore has been developed over the past 10 years to become a state-of-the-art shopper research platform that allows scalable, effective analysis of shopper behavior without the need of expensive and time consuming real-world test environments. The simulated environments are either brick-and-mortar or online retailing.

To date, Simstore has supported research among millions of consumers in more than 30 countries with even greater scale possible together with GfK.

Debra A. Pruent, Member of the Management Board at GfK and responsible for the Consumer Experiences sector comments: "Digitalization is the biggest opportunity for market research. With the technology from NORM Research & Consulting, client research projects can be performed world-wide quickly and efficiently. The company is one of the leaders in this technology and already counts many of the world's largest consumer goods manufacturers among its customers. The scalable software is an ideal complement to the
GfK portfolio in shopper research and provides an enormous competitive advantage."

Adrian Sanger, Global Head of Shopper at GfK, adds: "This acquisition extends our Shopper offering for consumer goods, retail and technology clients. Through combining behavioral data with Simstore, clients have a more complete view of the shopper globally, driving clearer insight to optimize the shelf, the channels and the shopping experience."

Anders Örbom, co-founder and CEO of NORM Research & Consulting, adds: "As pioneers in virtual shopper research, we have put our passion and expertise in developing an optimal software solution. Under the umbrella of GfK, we can now scale and integrate our technology into a global shopper portfolio. Together, we offer a unique suite of shopper research tools and advise our clients in their strategic and operational shopper activities."

Andreas Lee, co-founder of NORM Research & Consulting, comments: "We are very excited to become part of GfK. The new setup will further strengthen our development of innovative methods to understand and predict shopper behavior."

NORM Research & Consulting AB was founded in 2003 and employs 60 employees under the leadership of its founders Anders Örbom and Andreas Lee. From its locations in Stockholm and Amsterdam, the company carries out global projects for clients such as Unilever, Carlsberg, Nestlé, Arla Foods, and Philips.


About GfK

GfK is the trusted source of relevant market and consumer information that enables its clients to make smarter decisions. More than 13,000 market research experts combine their passion with GfK's long-standing data science experience. This allows GfK to deliver vital global insights matched with local market intelligence from more than 100 countries. By using innovative technologies and data sciences, GfK turns big data into smart data, enabling its clients to improve their competitive edge and enrich consumers' experiences and choices.

For more information, please visit www.gfk.com or follow GfK on Twitter: www.twitter.com/gfk

Responsible under press legislation:
GfK SE, Corporate Communications
Jan Saeger
Nordwestring 101
90419 Nuremberg
Germany
T +49 911 395 4440



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