LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Effective immediately, Cannondale Associates, Glendinning Management Consultants, MVI (Management Ventures, Inc.), and Retail Forward combine operations to create Kantar Retail (www.kantarretail.com), the world’s leading retail insights and consulting business. Each of these businesses is renowned for its unique capabilities and best-in-class tools utilized by the world’s leading retailers, manufacturers, consulting organizations and retail services firms.

Kantar Retail, a WPP company, unifies the strengths and diverse talents of four specialist companies to become the pre-eminent provider of transformational insights, strategic consulting and capabilities-building for the global retail marketplace. With 400 employees across 15 global markets, Kantar Retail provides the world’s leading retailers and manufacturers a broad spectrum of proprietary tools, capabilities and training platforms that deliver competitive advantage, enhance revenue and profitability, and fundamentally transform the behavior of consumers, shoppers and retailers. The company is a strategic partner to more than 300 clients, many of which are Fortune 500 companies.

“We are very excited about the future of Kantar Retail,” said Wayne Levings, Chief Executive Officer. “Winning at retail and with shoppers are key challenges facing our clients and critical imperatives for the leadership teams of their organizations, particularly in today’s increasingly competitive global environment,” commented Levings. “By providing our clients with access to breakthrough retail and shopper insights, industry-leading tools, best-in-class capabilities and training programs under one umbrella, Kantar Retail is uniquely positioned to help our clients achieve competitive advantage in the marketplace and ensure they are optimally positioned for the future,” he adds.

Kantar Retail’s globally integrated service offer enables clients to partner with one firm to create synergies and strategic alignment across multiple teams and functions from consumer and shopper insights and category management to brand strategy, retail marketing and field sales teams. The company is able to affect tangible transformation for its clients through a unique combination of services that moves information to insight and strategy to execution.

Kantar Retail offers a full suite of capabilities including:

• Shopper, customer, and competitor intelligence. The company’s proprietary retail and shopper insight capabilities blend the strengths of legacy Retail Forward and MVI syndicated intelligence services (the Retail Forward Intelligence System™ and MVI-Insights) to create an online platform of in-depth, actionable and forward-looking insights on the retail marketplace. Additional services include ShopperScape™, a monthly online survey tracking shopping behaviors and motivations; ShopperGenetics®, the largest frequent shopper card database in the industry; and ShopComm™, a new capability that links demand generation activities such as advertising, CRM and online marketing with ShopperGenetics® data to deliver detailed insights into purchase response and a highly accurate measurement of ROI. Kantar Retail also publishes industry surveys including the annual PoweRanking® study and industry benchmarking studies on trade promotion strategy and category management/consumer marketing at retail.
• Retail industry insights. Vast experience in shopper segmentation, purchase behavior analysis, assortment planning, store clustering and loyalty dynamics, combined with proprietary analytical tools including TradeDNA® and CategoryDNA®, help clients better understand shopper, customer and competitor behavior to optimize merchandising and marketing decisions, achieve financial objectives and drive brand loyalty.
• Retail strategy. Kantar Retail helps retailers and manufacturers develop and execute winning retail, shopper, channel, category, and go-to-market strategies that drive profitable growth. This extends from market positioning to category and aisle reinvention at the store level. No other consulting firm provides more expertise and experience addressing key retail issues facing retailers and brands or stronger capabilities to help clients execute strategic recommendations.
• Organizational competency definition and assessment and training. Kantar Retail creates transformational strategies for retailers and suppliers through organizational design, process definition, and commercial capability development. Through customized training and coaching programs, industry and retailer events, and eLearning platforms, Kantar Retail delivers solutions to help clients define, measure and build the skills of their commercial teams.

“Kantar Retail’s mission is to drive “tangible transformation” throughout our clients’ businesses,” Levings commented. “Our people make practical, visible transformational changes that might be as small as resetting a shelf or training a single person, or as large as creating the vision and strategy of an entire company. The assets, capabilities, deep retail industry knowledge and enormous talent of our people enable us to better meet our clients’ needs and deliver greater value, to truly transform their businesses,” he concluded.

About Kantar Retail

Kantar Retail (www.kantarretail.com) is a global retail insights and consulting business that works with clients to transform the behavior of consumers, shoppers and retailers. Kantar Retail serves the world’s leading retailers and manufacturers and has offices in 15 markets around the globe. By combining the resources of Cannondale, Glendinning, MVI and Retail Forward, the company solves client issues from tactical to strategic and provides organizations with the skills and capabilities to act. Kantar Retail offers clients better internal alignment and project efficiency, from insight through strategy to activation, and across marketing through category management to sales. Kantar Retail is headquartered in London and is part of the Kantar Group of WPP.

For more information about Kantar Retail and its services, contact Katherine Clarke, Vice President of Marketing, at 614.355.4009 or Katherine.clarke@kantarretail.com and visit us online at www.kantarretail.com to download a complimentary copy of Kantar Retail’s Breakthrough Insights: The Way Forward.

About Kantar

Kantar is one of the world's largest insight, information and consultancy networks. By uniting the diverse talents of its 13 specialist companies, the group aims to become the pre-eminent provider of compelling and inspirational insights for the global business community. Its 26,500 employees work across 95 countries and across the whole spectrum of research and consultancy disciplines, enabling the group to offer clients business insights at each and every point of the consumer cycle. The group’s services are employed by over half of the Fortune Top 500 companies.

For further information, please visit us at www.kantar.com