Tai joins from Nielsen where she has been regional president for Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa and Singapore since 2010. In that role she created a digital culture in Nielsen and set up its first Innovation Lab outside the US.

Tai joined Nielsen in 2008 as chief operating officer and before that she'd held a number of roles at GE.

Schuit joined GfK in 2014 as head of consumer experiences in The Netherlands. In 2016 she was made managing director. Before joining GfK she worked at Ipsos, Beiersdorf and Nielsen.

Both Tai and Schuit will report to CEO, Peter Feld. He said: “Cheong Tai and Margret Schuit are highly skilled managers with longstanding experience in managing regional business units of global organisations, in particular in the market research business. Throughout their careers, both of them successfully led transformation processes and developed digital innovations with a strong client focus. This is exactly the skill set we need to accelerate digitisation at GfK and strengthen the competitiveness of our company among our regional businesses.”

The appointments follow last week’s announcement that the business was focusing on digitisation.