BDRC Sold to French Research Group BVA

London-based consumer insight firm BDRC has been acquired by French research and consultancy company BVA Group. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 1991, BDRC Group in the UK consists of main agency BDRC, mystery shopping and store observation firm ESA Retail, digital agency Alligator, operations business Perspective Research Services, and Viewpoint, a qual recruitment and studio specialist. Key market sectors served include financial services, retail, media, leisure and culture, hospitality and transport. Internationally BDRC has offices in Washington DC, Sydney, Singapore, Jakarta, Beijing and Cape Town, but it works in more than 90 countries. The Group has annual revenues of over £25m and 170 staff.

BDRC Chief Executive Cris Tarrant (second from the right) explains: 'It has always been our intent that the company should only ever be sold to a business that preserves and builds on what has been achieved at BDRC and that has a similar culture. In BVA we are confident we have found such a partner. Our aim now is to bring to our clients the benefits of being part of a larger group, including fresh thinking in emerging areas such as behavioural. There will be no change in the leadership and management team of BDRC and all staff will be retained, as this is a deal based not on cost savings but rather on business synergies and shared enterprise'.

BVA's services range from feedback management and mystery shopping to customer satisfaction and NPS, as well as ethnography, and include a behavioural change or Nudge unit. Subsidiary PRS INVIVO specialises in packaging & shopper research and last month, the group acquired Lyon-based Côté Clients; and invested further in in-store data collection software company IVS. Pascal Gaudin (third from the left), BVA's CEO, described the latest acquisition as an 'important step' in the company's plan to become a European-based global leader in research-based consulting. The combined group will have more than twenty offices in eleven countries, with its main focus across Europe, Asia and America.

Web sites: www.bdrc.com and www.bva-group.com .