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Consumer-centric" partnership aims to bridge the information gap between retail sales tracking and consumer panel data.
Honchos of both ACNielsen U.S. and Spectra, Inc. vow that the partnership the two research companies entered into last month will usher in a new era of store-level marketing.
Called Lifestyle Track, the new service melds ACNielsen sales tracking data with Spectra's Lifestyle/Lifestage Grid, enabling brand managers-and their individual retail accounts-to monitor hard-data results of marketing efforts aimed at targeted consumer groups. Currently, Spectra uses Nielsen panel data to assign a share index to each of the target groups identified by six demographic and nine lifestyle criteria. Now quarterly volume data will be added to the mix.
"Before Nielsen and IRI, sales were tracked by warehouse shipments. Then scanner data became available and brought marketers a new level of insight," says Spectra president John Larkin. "This follows that continuum. This is as important to consumer marketing today as ECR was eight or nine...