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ENTIRE CONTENTS COPYRIGHT 1999 BY THE AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION, CHICAGO, ILL. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AS A SPECIAL PULL-OUT SECTION IN THE AUG. 16,1999 ISSUE OF MARKETING NEWS.
1 ACNIELSEN CORP. www.aenielsen.com
ACNielsen Corp. (ACN) in Stamford, Conn., was founded in 1923, acquired by Dun & Bradstreet Corp. in 1984 and became a separate public company in November 1996. The chairman and CEO of ACN is Nicholas L. Trivisonno; vice chairman is Michael P. Connors; and the president and COO is Robert J. Lievense.
Revenues in 1998 were $1.4 billion, up 0.8% from 1997. In '98, 72.6% of revenues, or $1.0 billion, were generated outside the United States. The growth rate includes estimated revenues for both 1997 and 1998 from acquisitions of ACNielsen South Africa, Johannesburg; Entertainment Data Inc., Beverly Hills, Calif.; and BASES Worldwide, Covington, Ky. Both years' results exclude the revenues of ACN's media research services in Latin America, which was traded to IBOPE Media Information for an 11% share in IMI in 1998.
ACN, with about 20,700 full-time employees in offices in 80 countries and customers in more than 100 countries, provides market information, research and analysis to the consumer products and service industries in four areas:
Retail Measurement Services provides continuous tracking of consumer purchases at POS via scanning and in-store audits in food, drug and other retail outlets in more than 80 countries. In the United States and other countries, ACN's Scantrack services provide information on actual purchases, market shares, distribution, pricing, merchandising and promotional activities on a weekly basis.
Related services include account-level reports (including retailer-defined custom trading areas); decision-support services, including the Inf*Act Workstation; Spaceman merchandising services and marketing; and sales applications. Multicountry reporting is available.
ACNielsen EDI provides motion-picture industry clients with continuous tracking of box-office receipts, gathering them from over 45,000 movie screens in 11 countries. In '98, ACNielsen expanded account-level services in the United States, Europe and Latin America, launching an audit-based retail measurement service in India and in four sub-Saharan African markets. The company also launched Scantrack in Argentina, upgrading from the previous audit-based services; conducted the world's largest retail audit in 300,000 villages in China; and introduced Spaceman Merchandiser software in 22 countries.
Consumer Panel Services tracks the buying behavior...