Ipsos MORI Hires UK Retail & Shopper Head

Ipsos MORI has appointed Lindsay Cowan, formerly TNS Research International's Global Director of Shopper Insight, as Head of UK Retail and Shopper.

Cowan joins with more than 15 years' experience in both agency and in-house roles. For the past 18 months, she served as Director of Insight at data-driven marketing agency Quant Presky Maves where she combined work on EPOS, sales and loyalty data with qual and quant research. Before this, she set up TNS RI's global shopper insight and research team.

Earlier in her career, she worked for dunnhumby as Group Account Director for Tesco, which involved rolling out the Clubcard loyalty card, segmenting the data into key customer segments, and deploying and utilising the data to help the client launch new product lines and business areas. During this period, she was seconded to Tesco's head office for two years, to help the retailer establish its internal Customer Insight Unit and commercialise Clubcard data with its Trade & Marketing teams.

In addition, she has worked for several customer analytics agencies including 5one and MDS.

'Retail and shopper research is one of our major priorities for 2011,' said Ben Page, CEO of Ipsos MORI. 'Hiring someone with Lindsay's experience and expertise is vital to our ongoing success in this area.'

Cowan replaces Nathan Bartlett, who left the firm in October to join the Retail team at Creston-owned ICM Research.

Web site: www.ipsos.com .