ESOMAR Council

Fred John is serves as Principal at C. Frederic John & Associates. Before starting this venture, Fred was Senior Business Leader, Intelligence and Planning at MasterCard Worldwide where he was part of MasterCard’s global intelligence team, responsible for managing global research efforts, including those related to corporate reputation and new product development. He was also responsible for developing and carrying out professional skills and insights training programs for internal staff at MasterCard.

Fred has been in the survey research field since 1978, holding senior positions with a number of leading suppliers, including Yankelovich Partners, where he was responsible for their global network, before joining MasterCard in 2001.

Fred is an active member of ESOMAR and a recognised expert on international research and global marketing, as well as a keen observer of the industry itself. His paper on the downside of supplier consolidation was named the best presentation of 2004 by Research Conference Reports.

Bruno Colin has spent more than 25 years in market research working for several of the world’s top global market research firms including AC Nielsen, GfK and currently as Managing Director of Operations with TNS Sofres. Bruno lives in France.

An ESOMAR member since 2008, Bruno holds a degree in Engineering and an MBA in Finance and Administration and currently sits on the ESOMAR Legal Committee. He has written many papers for ESOMAR, IREP and the ARF and is a member of the SYNTEC Online Council and the IREP Scientific Committee.

David Smith is a Director of DVL Smith and a Professor at the University of Hertfordshire Business School. He is a former Chairman and Fellow of the Market Research Society, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and also a Fellow of the Institute of Business Consultants. He is the author of two books on marketing intelligence and has written over 60 papers on different aspects of evidence-based decision making. He is a Silver Medal holder of the Market Research Society and holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of London. He is the recipient of the John Downham Award for Excellence in Marketing Intelligence and has also won numerous Best Paper awards from both ESOMAR and the MRS. He has been closely involved with ESOMAR initiatives to help develop marketing intelligence talent and is experienced in designing different skills and development programmes on different aspects of market intelligence and marketing.

Luiz Sá Lucas has over 25 years experience in multivariate statistical analysis and marketing research and is currently the Technical Director of Ibope Inteligência in Brasil. In 1992, he founded IDS, which was acquired by Ibope in 2010, becoming the Rio de Janeiro branch of that agency. He has developed tools that conjugate qualitative and quantitative techniques and has for the last 10 years been involved in data mining activities and their integration with market research. A member of ESOMAR since 1997, Luiz has been an active Committee member and presenter at several European and Latin American ESOMAR Conferences. He has presented papers at other conferences in the USA and Japan and has published papers in Brazil's Journal of Marketing Research and the Brazilian Review of Statistics and well as served as a speaker for several ABEP (BRazilian Market Research Society) meetings. Luiz holds a Master's Degree in Systems Optimisation, with an emphasis on Statistical Multivariate Data Analysis and is currently teaching at the Superior School of Advertising and Media - ESPM.

Michael Bendig has initially worked for 10 years in international consumer market research, and now for 6 years in the healthcare sector. While working in Germany, France and Switzerland, he has conducted research in all major industrialised countries. Michael has substantial hands-on experience of intercultural differences and continues to enjoy exploring them.

An ESOMAR member since 2003, Michael holds business degrees from ESC Bordeaux Ecole de Management, France, and FH Muenster, Germany. He served as Chairman of the Programme Committee for the 2008 ESOMAR Healthcare Conference in Rome, has been a member of EphMRA European Pharmaceutical Market Research Association since 2004 and co-authored the BI Global Business Analysis Guidebook, 2010.

Michael is currently focusing his market research efforts on making new cancer treatments available, after having led the global primary market research group at Boehringer Ingelheim's prescription medicines headquarters. He is 41, married, and currently lives in Mainz, Germany, with his wife and two sons.

Prof. Dr. Niels Schillewaert is Professor of Marketing at the Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School and Managing Partner and Director of ForwaR&D Lab at InSites Consulting, a full service online market research company. He has been an ESOMAR member since 2006 and recently served as the ESOMAR Belgian Representative for two years.

Niels holds a Masters in Marketing and Ph.D. in Applied Economics and serves as an ISBM Research fellow at Penn State University. He was awarded for his research several times and has been published at Esomar as well as in leading scientific journals such as The Journal of Marketing, The International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Services Research, Industrial Marketing Management, The Journal of Business Research, The Journal of the Market Research Society and Information & Management.

Pramod Kumar has more than 12 years of work experience in managing and directing research projects through both quantitative and qualitative techniques. In 2002, he joined RNB Research where he has risen from Research Executive to his current position as Vice President. In this capacity he has handled various national and international projects and is an expert in conducting large scale studies.
Pramod is also establishing the RNB Global University by 2013, which will offer training & courses on market and social research to interested students in India as well as in Southeast Asia.

Pravin has been in the research domain for the past 15 years and continues to contribute to market research in various avatars: Entrepreneur, Technologist, Research-evangelist, Speaker. He heads two entities: 'krea', an India-centric panel research firm and 'The Social Catalyst', a non-profit trust aimed at professionalising the work of NGOs.

In regular demand as a speaker, Pravin has presented papers and chaired discussions at several conferences. As an ESOMAR Representative for three years, he has organised custom ESOMAR events in India and is spearheading the movement for making MR a career of choice for students.

Tatiana Barakshina has 8 years hands-on experience in international market research and has been a lecturer and professional trainer in market research for 4 years. She has designed and implemented complex market segmentation projects in Europe, CIS and Middle East and collaborates with several Russian publications such as op Leader Journal, Delovoj Kvartal, the FederalPress and UralPolit.ru

Dieter holds a diploma in economics and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Cologne. Before founding the GP Forschungsgruppe Institut in 1985, he served at a university as an assistant professor and worked as a market researcher for an industrial company and at several market research institutes. He has been an ESOMAR member for twenty-five years and, from 2001 onwards, has served as a Council member and as the ESOMAR German Representative.

He is specifically skilled in social and public research, is an expert on the European Commission, teaches Medical Sociology at a university for applied science, and has published over 20 books as author or editor.

For the last two years he has been a member of the jury for the German Market Research Award.

He remains directly involved in the research projects of his company, especially in the social reporting of poverty and wealth, health technology assessments, and trends in society. Because of his broad knowledge and expertise, he is regularly invited to comment on developments in the industry and society, both on television and in the press.