1971: Founding of the company
Gruppe Nymphenburg was founded by Dipl.-Psych Ursula König as Werbegruppe Nymphenburg in 1971. Its mission: Well-founded, psychological knowledge should be transferred systematically and innovatively into the fields of marketing and advertising. To date, the company has remained true to this founding idea. In 1980, Dipl.-Psych. Norbert Wittmann and Dr. Hans-Georg Häusel joined as partners and took over the business twenty years later after Ursula König left the company.

1983: Commencement of retail consulting
1983 was a “fateful year” for the company. A large retail company group retained the Werbegruppe for the purpose of developing a shop concept from a “psychological point of view”. The concept was implemented and was so successful that many other retail companies developed shop concepts. These shop concepts soon went beyond the mere shop layout. There was now a focus on the entire operational and sales functions: Ranging from product assortment development to operational processes through to consulting on enterprise resource planning. This laid the foundation for business consulting. Dr. Ullrich Kaeppel, who joined as a partner in 1983, played a significant role in this business development. He was one of the first to develop the analysis of cash register receipts in order to illustrate the effects of combined purchases. Today, this is a standard procedure in the area of product assortment management.

1987: Pioneer of shopper research
Due to its unique knowledge on shoppers, manufacturers of brand-name products took notice of the company. They wanted to know where and how they should present their products and product assortments in their stores. The first behaviour-oriented shopper tests such as behavioural surveys, shop frequency surveys and shopper video analyses were conducted. Gruppe Nymphenburg was a pioneer in the area of shopper research on the basis of these approaches which were completely new worldwide. These research instruments have been developed further in recent decades. For more information in this regard, please see the link a•proPOS. In 1990, all creative areas, the classical advertising area as well as the area of Store Design were outsourced – combined with a focus on business consulting – the company Werbegruppe Nymphenburg began to operate under the name Gruppe Nymphenburg.

At the end of the 1990s, Gruppe Nymphenburg broke further new ground: marketing brain research. With Limbic®, a unique model for brand positioning and target group segmentation was created. This was combined with the establishment of a further field of consulting, namely brand consulting. Thereby, it was possible to combine unique consumer knowledge with shopper knowledge. This is the basis for the successful development of the company to date.

2005: Internationalization
In 2005, Gruppe Nymphenburg became a member of the Ebeltoft Group, a network of the most renowned retail and consumer research consulting companies worldwide. Today, Dr. Thomas Rotthowe, a member of the Board of Directors of Gruppe Nymphenburg who joined as partner at the end of 2004, is President of this global business alliance. 

2010: Relocation to new premises
The years 2008 to 2010 were for the German economy and thus for almost all business consulting companies years of crisis. However, not for Gruppe Nymphenburg which was able to increase its turnover and hire new employees. This growth made it necessary to relocate the company to new and larger premises.