Waterbury consumer-market researcher Harrison Group LLC has been sold to British Internet polling specialist YouGov plc, widening YouGov’s footprint in the U.S. polling/market research arena.
Neither company disclosed terms.
But Research-live.com reports on its website that YouGov paid Harrison Group’s owners an initial $6 million, with another $7 million linked to unspecified performance targets over the next three years.
Harrison Group’s expertise is concept testing, forecasting, branding, business consulting and market modeling for some of America’s top retailers, financial services firms, drug makers, technology firms and providers of interactive entertainment.
YouGov, which started in 2000 in the United Kingdom, serves many of the same types of industries and clients who dominate their respective overseas markets. Moreover, YouGov is best known in Britain as its media’s dominant pollster.
CEO Doug Harrison said the deal exposes his firm’s clients to YouGov’s global network of research and polling capabilities.
Harrison, who started his research company in 1996, will remain CEO of renamed Harrison Group, A YouGov Company.
Harrison Group had 2009 revenue of $9.6 million, according to Research-live.com.
The addition of Harrison’s 35 employees in Waterbury more than doubles to 80 YouGov’s U.S. workforce, also officed in Marblehead, Mass., Phoenix, San Francisco, and Seattle.
YouGov employs 450 in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East.
