GFK expands digital portfolio in shopper research by investing in NORM Research

Cristina Blanaru Business, Marketing, Studies

GfK announced, mid-August, the acquisition of NORM Research & Consulting AB, Sweden-based market research company specialized in virtual shopper research. NORM’s 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:

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:

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:

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.

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.