DVJ´s global consultancy team is on a rise

Published on 23 05 2023

The consultant team is an important part of DVJ Insights and as the company grows, so does the team. In the past weeks, we have welcomed new joiners, Client Consultants – Kirsten Bartels in our Germany office in Hamburg and Mark van Koolwijk in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Building and deepening relationships with both local and international clients will be a key focus in order to secure the continuous growth of the marketing research and analytics agency. In this role, Mark will be in a team of Roderik Sorbi and Kirsten in Jemma Toynebee Smith´s team.

DVJ´s Global Commercial Director, Jori van de Spijker, shared his thoughts on the current and planned expansion of the team: “Joy is one of the pillars of DVJ. That means joy in working with clients, but also in working with smart and fun colleagues. I’m happy we have found two great additions to our team – Mark and Kirsten. Both are clearly passionate and knowledgeable about research, and I’ve already experienced first-hand how fun it is to work with them. I’m confident they will do great and I’m very happy to have them on our team.”

“To continue providing our clients with the best and most innovative solutions, we must grow along with the needs of the market.”

Kirsten Bartels

Kirsten is a proven expert in answering operative and strategic questions based on identified customer insights and profound marketing knowledge. She has a rich fact-based consultancy history, having worked for GfK as a Senior Research Consultant and at Ipsos as a Director of Market Strategy & Understanding for more than 20 years altogether.
With proven expertise in managing and coordinating projects as well as using agile management methods for solving complex problems, Kirsten is working for Samsung Electronics Austria & Switzerland (SEAS) and other clients in the field of durables & services.

So far Kirsten has been focused on marketing research for durables & services, meaning categories typically not being bought in supermarkets such as household appliances, consumer electronics, power tools or services around telecommunication and entertainment.

Kirsten quote: „For successful market research in durables and services it is crucial to consider the special needs of these markets, e.g. long purchasing cycle, low purchasing frequency, high capital investment, high risk and therefore more intensive purchase processes in most of the cases. I am looking forward to partnering with clients who value our validated solutions and are open to innovative approaches tailored to their needs.”

“Moreover, I believe that a “seamless integration” of qualitative and quantitative research methods brings the most value to the clients. That’s why I love our DVJ mass-qual approach: it combines the “best of both worlds” and allows us to explore and quantify in one single project.”

Mark van Koolwijk

Mark is an insight professional with 10 years of experience on the agency side and client side. As a Research Manager at Ipsos, he worked for many national and international B2C and B2B brands. He later joined fintech scale-up Mollie where he established the research function as their first in-house market researcher. He gets energy from helping clients to unleash the power of insights, and that’s exactly what he will do at DVJ Insights.

Mark: “I am very excited to be part of DVJ. The growth of the company in recent years has been quite impressive, and I look forward to contributing to the future success of DVJ and helping our clients make impactful decisions that enable Brand Growth.”