CPG Plans and Launches from VNU

VNU has announced a number of new services and initiatives at the Consumer 360 event in the USA. They include CBI, a proprietary integrated data solution for CPG companies; new methodologies with the ambitious goal of 'tracking retail sales across all outlets', globally; two new consumer insights services based on Homescan(r); and a tracking service and consumer panel for ethnic consumers.

Consumer 360 is an event for the CPG industry which is sponsored by two of its Marketing Information group divisions, ACNielsen U.S. and Spectra.


CBI - Continuous Business Intelligence - is VNU Marketing Information's new proprietary approach to data integration and harmonization which the company says will 'allows consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies to continually monitor the health of their businesses, optimize their marketing investments and derive maximum value from their information - regardless of its source'.

The suite of solutions has been developed following a client-needs assessment conducted jointly with IBM over the last 12 months, and will combine IBM's leading-edge technology with VNU's expertise in data management and coding to provide clients with both demand- and supply-centric market evaluations and predictive modeling capabilities.

John Hastings, Senior VP and General Manager, VNU Global Business Intelligence, says the CBI solutions offer 'an elegant answer to the CPG industry's need to sift through and combine disparate data sets to address its most crucial marketing issues', at a time when clients are 'struggling.. to deal with ever-growing amounts of data'. He describes CBI as 'data management with a purpose' and says the days of 'build-it-and-they-will-come' data warehouses in search of business issues are over.


Also at the event, ACNielsen outlined its plans to provide 'complete coverage of the global CPG marketplace' using patent-pending methodologies and a multi-faceted approach to tracking retail sales across all outlets, including those that currently offer little or no point-of-sale (POS) data to the marketplace, such as Aldi in Europe. ACNielsen uses 'Cash-Slip Panels' to track Aldi and others - these collect cash register receipts from consumers outside stores, and are available in Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, with more countries pending.

The company introduced Scantrack(r) Channel Views, the first 'all-outlet' sales information service introduced last year in the USA. John Petrakis, ACNielsen Senior VP, Global Strategy, leaves no doubt about the intended scope: 'Our objective is to cover 100% of consumer consumption, and that means providing a reliable read of all retail sales, wherever they occur'.

Other prongs of the initiative are the expanding Homescan consumer panel; two new patent-pending, shipment-based models that will be tested with leading CPG manufacturers this year and which will include coverage of low-incidence product categories; and the Global One Share tracking service for multinational manufacturers seeking a view of category and brand performance across countries. 'The complexities of today's marketplace mean that there's no single solution to the coverage issue' says Petrakis. 'Our solutions, several of which are available right now, are designed to give clients the flexibility they need to monitor their performance in the view that will be most helpful to them'.


ACNielsen also announced the launch of two new consumer insights services powered by the extensive global expansion of its Homescan(r) consumer panel business. The new services focus on new product introductions and out-of-home consumption. New Product Alert gives CPG manufacturers the opportunity to survey buyers of their new products shortly after purchase, sending them online surveys about their motivations for purchase and satisfaction, while the I-Scan(tm) Impulse individual panel will be extended to Europe from successful starts in Asia Pacific - this gives panel members patented pocket-sized scanners to record impulse and other on-the-go purchases outside the home.


The two event sponsors, Spectra and ACNielsen U.S., announced the launch of Category ShareCast, which combines data from the Homescan(r) panel with Spectra's consumer segmentation modeling, and aims to help measure and build shopper loyalty, providing further detail of clients' share of each shopper's total category-specific spending. Tim Kregor, President of Spectra, says the missing link for clients is information about 'how much their customers are spending outside their chain, and how many dollars they can hope to claim'.


Lastly, VNU Marketing Information announced two new services expand its portfolio of ethnic market information capabilities - Target Track and Homescan(r) African-American Consumer Panel.

Target Track, a joint offering of ACNielsen U.S. and Spectra, analyzes point-of-sale data from food, drug, and mass merchandise stores to quantify sales among Hispanic and African-American consumers, highlighting those categories and brands that skew toward each segment, and adding analysis about promotional effectiveness within each segment. It offers reporting for the US as a whole, plus within 20 census-based retailer trade areas, 13 African-American markets, and 11 Hispanic markets, and may be used in conjunction with services such as Spectra's HispanIQ.

The ACNielsen Homescan African-American Consumer Panel provides integrated shopping and attitudinal insights into African-American consumers, using a nationally-representative sample of African-American households. Panelists record UPC purchases made at any retail outlet using patented in-home scanners and then download the information to ACNielsen for analysis. The panel is a subset of Homescan and will be enhanced later this year with country-of-origin information.


VNU's home page is at www.vnu.com

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.