Kantar Worldpanel (formerly TNS Worldpanel) is an international company dealing in consumer knowledge and insights based on continuous consumer panels. Kantar Worldpanel is a part of the London headquartered market research company Kantar Group. Kantar Worldpanel has a team of 3,500 people and services covering 60 countries with direct ownership or through partners. They work in fields such as fast-moving consumer goods, impulse products, beauty and personal care, fashion, baby, telecommunications and entertainment. History Kantar Worldpanel's first panels were founded in the 1940s by companies like Attwood Statistics Limited in the UK (1948) and Secodip in France (1969). The latter soon started to expand their coverage, firstly to Spain in 1973 and afterwards to Portugal in 1989. In the 1970s and the 1980s, other companies also started creating new panels. In 1976 Taylor Nelson launched the first usage panel for food and drinks in the UK. In 1980 NFO created a usage panel for beverages in the United States. And in 1985, IBOPE launched a consumer panel in Brazil (1985). In the 1990s the consolidation and development of the consumer panels network accelerated. In the UK, AGB and Taylor Nelson merged to create Taylor Nelson AGB in 1991, so bringing purchase and usage panels into the same company. In France, Sofres acquired Secodip in 1992 and soon started planning the development of new consumer panels in Asia and Latin America. Both groups came together in 1997 when Taylor Nelson AGB and Sofres merged to create Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS). All consumer panels were then taken into a specific division that in 2003 started using the TNS Worldpanel brand. While all these corporate movements were taking place, the network expanded across different regions. In Asia, between 1997 and 2002, six new consumer panels were developed and launched using the Frank Small Associates' network that Secodip had bought in 1995. The first launch took place in Taiwan in 1997. Two years after, in 1999, Korea and Thailand were added to the network, and Philippines and Malaysia then joined in 2000 followed by Vietnam in 2002. Meanwhile, In China, TNS began a partnership in 1999 with local research company CVSC, who had started a panel two years earlier. In 2001, TNS and the parent company of CVSC formed a new joint venture company called CTR (CVSC TNS Research) and the consumer panel in China joined the Worldpanel network. In Latin America, after the