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ACNielsen Launches Shopper Trends in the U.S.

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. -- Grocery and supercenter retailers will now be able to accurately assess the impact of shopper attitudes on their brand equity, on the loyalty of their shoppers, and on actual sales, using ACNielsen's Shopper Trends service, which it plans to launch across 23 unique U.S. markets.

The launch was announced at Consumer 360, an educational and networking conference for the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry. The sponsors of the event are ACNielsen and Spectra, businesses of Progressive Grocer's parent company VNU.

Shopper Trends uses an online survey methodology that asks shoppers for their opinions about a range of factors that go into brand equity, as determined by Winning Brands, ACNielsen's brand equity model. This attitudinal research, which allows ACNielsen to create a "store equity index," is then linked to information about actual consumer shopping behavior from the ACNielsen Homescan consumer panel, to determine the impact of the store's brand equity on actual sales.

"Knowing and quantifying why a shopper does or does not shop a store is a crucial insight for success in today's retail environment," said Robert Tomei, general manager of ACNielsen's U.S. Homescan business. "It is not enough to just understand what shoppers say is important. The key is to know what attitudes truly influence sales. Shopper Trends provides a vital link between attitudes and behavior, so retailers can focus on what really matters -- driving sales and building market share."

For a retailer, understanding the drivers of a banner's equity can reveal what truly drives shoppers to their stores, and what weaknesses may be exposed by competitive actions. For a manufacturer, Shopper Trends can help identify which brands are key to a retailer's equity, and can differentiate attitudes among category and brand shoppers.

The launch of Shopper Trends is part of the ACNielsen U.S. MegaPanel initiative in which its Homescan consumer panel is being expanded from 91,500 households to 125,000 households by the end of this year. Members of the panel are equipped with patented, hand-held scanning devices that they use to scan all of their UPC-coded purchases brought into the home. This purchase information, combined with information on household demographics, gives the CPG industry an accurate and robust view of consumer shopping behavior.

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