Nielsen and Wal-Mart Back Together Again

Retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has agreed to resume sharing consumer data from its Walmart and Sam's Club stores with Nielsen, after a ten-year break.

A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said the retailer had broken off the agreement to make sure that 'no outside parties could view Wal-Mart's U.S. performance without its consent.' Now Nielsen will once again provide the world's largest retailer with advice and information on consumer trends, according to a joint press release.

The agreement comes after eight straight quarters of declines in Wal-Mart's revenue from stores open at least a year, and also follows the February establishment of a new global consumer insights team led by former Sam's Club EVP of Membership and Marketing Cindy Davis. In a statement, she comments: 'We plan to share our point-of-sale information, [to] identify category growth opportunities sooner and collaborate with our manufacturer partners to develop more impactful ...programs going forward'.

With revenue of $419 billion worldwide, Wal-Mart accounts for almost 10% all retail dollars spent in the US, excluding automotive sales, and is visited by around 100 million US shoppers each week. Nielsen, itself the world's biggest research firm, has been using interviews with Wal-Mart shoppers to fill the hole in its stats for the past decade, and now says it will incorporate the more direct information into all its databases and consumer behavior forecasts over the next few months.

John Lewis, President and CEO of Nielsen's North America Consumer division, said in a statement: 'Nielsen is confident that both retailers and consumer goods manufacturers will benefit significantly from greater accuracy of information on what consumers buy.'

Web site: www.nielsen.com and www.walmartstores.com .

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

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