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Nielsen Becomes the Standards Bearer

Nielsen In-Store has agreed to take the reins of the P.R.I.S.M. project as the initiative to create an audience measurement system at retail moves forward.

Nielsen parent VNU made the announcement on Dec. 6 to coincide with the opening day of The Total Retail Experience in New York. The Institute's executive director, Peter Hoyt, officially unveiled the news from the keynote stage at the show.

The first step for Nielsen In-Store will be to conduct a follow-up round of research, to fine-tune the metrics developed last year by the In-Store Metrics Consortium and cover a broader range of product categories than were represented in the initial research. The company plans to begin that phase in early 2007.

From there, Nielsen In-Store hopes to provide audience data for "virtually every" U.S. retailer in the supermarket, drugstore and mass market channels some time in 2008, according to George Wishart, a VNU veteran who this month was named global managing director of Nielsen In-Store.

Wishart is excited about the opportunities that an audience measurement system can bring to the industry. "In-store marketing has been around since the days of the general store," he told the Institute. But historically, marketers have been "spending a great deal of money" on retail activity without having a clear understanding of its effectiveness, he said. "So the ability to measure it is important to a lot of constituents."

Those include retailers, product manufacturers, the marketing agencies that support them, and the media companies operating in-store networks. "Each constituent has unique needs, but they also have some very common needs as well," chief among them "a standard, consistent measurement and reporting capability" that will help everyone evaluate the benefits of marketing within the store, he says.

Once the research phase is complete, Nielsen will need to solicit the participation of retailers willing to provide the necessary data. "I expect there are going to be a few with a real sense of vision" who will get involved immediately, and "others that will be a little more conservative and won't jump in with two feet," he says. However, "most retailers are interested in understanding this tool and how it's going to work."

Another important item on the agenda is development of an effective system for measuring program compliance. "We're going to have to address a number of facets," he says, including the "clear divide" between existing auditing procedures for third-party media vehicles and more loosely tracked display and signage activity. The ultimate solution should entail both actual store audits and statistical modeling, he says.

While the syndicated program will use "the traditional CPG channels as a starting point," Nielsen will almost immediately begin to investigate expansion into channels outside its current area of expertise. "Our goal is to develop an industry standard that can be applied to any retail environment," Wishart says. Global expansion is also important, and Nielsen hopes to begin research in an overseas market by fall 2007, he says.

"All of these activities are complex," Wishart notes. "We don't underestimate the challenge of getting these things done."

That's why VNU "has committed to bringing all our assets to the table" through another new operating unit called NielsenConnect, which will integrate consumer and marketing information from the company's various business entities (ACNielsen, Spectra, Trade Dimensions, to name a few). "It's absolutely fundamental that companies will be able to use this as a planning tool" for developing more effective marketing strategies, Wishart says.

Effective in-store strategies will not seek to change shopper behavior, but rather will leverage the better understanding of behavior resulting from audience measurement "to optimize the selling opportunity" in stores, Wishart says.

Peter Breen
Managing Director, Content
In-Store Marketing Institute



Published: December 2006

Source: In-Store Marketing Institute

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