• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

Purvita Chatterjee

"Understanding the consumer will be our overriding strategy driver. We believe in putting the consumer at the centre of the strategy since we feel that insight into consumer demand has not been given its due place."

MUMBAI, March 7

NARROWING the gap between consultancy and research, IMRB International is launching The Henley Centre, a Kantar group company, for strategic marketing in India.

The Henley Centre is one of the UK's leading strategic marketing consultancies with over 25 years of experience. Based on its unique understanding and insights, The Henley Centre enables clients to bring the consumer into the heart of their organisations using a number of different consultancy tools such as visioning, future mapping, proposition development and testing, market sizing and forecasting, return on marketing investment.

The Henley Centre has partnered clients such as Coca Cola, GE, British Telecom and Unilever to build strong consumer foundations for brand strategy, brand extensions, marketing communications or to move into new markets.

Partnering its existing team in the UK, The Henley centre in India is currently a small team of five professionals headed by Mr Ashish Misra as General Manager for India.

Speaking to Business Line, Mr Nilesh Khare, Business Account Director, Strategic Marketing Unit, The Henley Centre, said, "Understanding the consumer will be our overriding strategy driver. We believe in putting the consumer at the centre of the strategy since we feel that insight into consumer demand has not been given its due place."

Tracking consumer behaviour in terms of what its clients can provide, The Henley Centre specialises in studying how demand is shaping vis-a-vis the consumer, in the projects it undertakes for its clients.

Beginning on a fresh slate in India, The Henley Centre has yet to start scouting for clients but obviously has an advantage of tapping into its erstwhile multinational clients based in the UK, who already have a presence in India. In fact, this is the Henley Centre's first foray outside the UK and India is expected to serve as a base for spreading its operations.

Adds Mr Khare, "India is the first country where the Henley Centre has set up operations and it will be using this as a vehicle to spread into the Asia Pacific and Gulf countries."

Using the database of IMRB will also be an added advantage since it will be in a position to access its syndicated research and leverage the same to service its clients. This is also the first time that a market research outfit such as IMRB has made a foray into consultancy in the country. Adds Mr Khare, "After all, today clients expect more than just research. We will be competing with all the other existing consulting firms in the business focusing on the consumer side of consultancy."

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication

Stories in this Section
It's a good innings for hotels too

Copyright © 2003, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line