The company’s adjusted operating income increased by 4.9% – or €9 million – to about €188 million.

The Consumer Choices sector made significant gains (up 9.2%), and the company said sales stabilised in the Consumer Experiences sector (down 1.1% compared with a fall of 5.4% the previous year).

Matthias Hartmann (pictured), chief executive officer, GfK said: “In 2015, we returned to achieving growth in line with our targets. We continued the process of digitising our products and services, and we successfully launched innovations. We did not quite achieve our margin targets. Overall, we are satisfied with the fourth quarter, because we were able to achieve good sales growth.”

With the exception of Northern Europe – which saw sales fall 3.1% – all the regions experienced organic growth. Latin America and Central Eastern Europe/META achieved particularly strong growth of 18.5% and 6.3% respectively.