Content area
Full Text
1 ACNielson Corp.
www.acnielson.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; the president and chief operating officer is Robert J. Lievense.
Revenues in 1997 were $1.4 billion, up 2.4% from 1996. In '96, 77.7% of revenues, or $1.1 billion, were generated outside the United States. The growth rate does not include acquisitions of $1.9 million in '96 and $39.7 million in '97; twothirds of the 1997 total was the December purchase of Entertainment Data Inc., a motion-picture boxoffice receipt tracking firm based in Beverly Hills, Calif.
ACN provides market information, research and analysis to the consumer products and service industries in four areas:
Retail Measurement Services provides product movement data through food, drug and other retail outlets in more than 65 countries. Its largest service is ScanTrack, which provides weekly data on packaged goods sales, market share and retail prices from 3,000 UPC scanner- equipped supermarkets in the United States.
Another service, Procision, tracks health and beauty aid product sales through 3,800 drug and mass merchandiser stores in the United States. In other countries, either scanning or audit-based methods are used to collect retail data. Services include account-level reports, information delivery, merchandising services and marketing and sales applications, as well as modeling and analytic services. Multicountry reporting is available.
Consumer Panel Services tracks mostly packaged goods purchasing of more than 119,000 households and their demographics through panels in 15 countries. In the United States, a panel of 52,000 households uses inhome scanners to record buying behavior and shopping patterns from a variety of outlets, including warehouse clubs, convenience stores, supermarkets, independent drug stores, mass merchandisers and book stores. Other methods of data collection, which vary by country, include diaries, cash register receipts and inhome interviews.
Media Measurement Services includes audience estimates and tracking for television, radio and print, as well as advertising expenditure measurements and customized media research. The company also TV audience measurement in 18 countries outside the Americas. Data collection is by people meter, set meter, diary or telephone.
Customized Research Services are provided through wholly owned subsidiaries or joint ventures outside...