Homescan

Measuring purchasing at the household level

Nielsen Homescan® is ACNielsen's leading-edge consumer panel designed to monitor and understand household purchasing of packaged grocery and fresh produce.

Homescan provides a marketing and sales information service incorporating both descriptive and diagnostic data. It's rich database not only tells you what is happening but, more importantly, it provides insights into why consumers behave the way they do.

This understanding is paramount in defining what marketing and sales strategies are necessary to change or reinforce consumer behaviour. Furthermore, Homescan provides the tools via which to monitor this change in behaviour pre and post strategy implementation, and in response to specific marketing and sales initiatives. This allows you to refine strategies as necessary and adopt appropriate tactics.

The consumer insights delivered by Homescan represent the definitive source for understanding purchase behaviour and shopping patterns for any segment of the population across all retail outlet types. Due to the continuous nature of the panel, one of the main applications is to analyse trends. Also, by comparing over time what is purchased with who is doing the purchasing and where they are doing it, it can provide a wide variety of diagnostic information to help make better-informed decisions.

Applications

Understanding the key drivers of sales:

• Homescan will provide information to determine how many households are buying a category, how much they buy and who they are. It will establish what levels of loyalty exist, and what other brands your brand buyers are purchasing.

• Understanding the buyers within the category is crucial in determining strategy, whether it is for launching a new product, diversification in to a new area or refining the brand plan for those within your existing portfolio. Such brand planning is facilitated by Nielsen Homescan® i-sights, a suite of reports concerning consumer purchasing behaviour which is available to clients on their desktop.

• Collectively such insights will allow you to create marketing and sales plans based on a clear understanding of what drives your sales and how this compares to competitors. Such comprehensive analysis of consumer behaviour will help you to position your brand to succeed.

Providing retail insights:

• In the past, manufacturers have relied solely on scanning data to judge the effectiveness of their brands in store, but in today’s highly competitive environment, sales data alone is not enough. Homescan delivers the ‘why behind the buy’ and will provide an in-depth understanding of your sales, consumers and shoppers in the store.

• Specifically designed for the sales-buyer interface, Nielsen Homescan® TradePlanner helps a manufacturer identify opportunities to increase shopper loyalty for their retail partner.

• Homescan TradePlanner, allows you to look at a category in exactly the same way as the retailer and helps you to prepare for those all-important trade reviews.

Effectively reaching target groups of consumers:

• Homescan demographic information is a must for understanding which demographic groups you need to target to grow sales of the category and your brand. It will identify consumer groups where your brand is strong/weak in comparison to the category and to your competing brands.

• Similarly your target consumers can be defined by which competitor products they are also  buying.

Evaluating new product success:

• To ensure the success of your new product launch or line extension, you must have your finger on the pulse of the buyers of your product. Homescan will determine if the trial and repeat rates are acceptable to sustain the brand in the long term by comparing against normative data compiled from numerous launches over the years.

• Homescan will also determine if new brand volume is sourced from brand switching, from within your own portfolio or from competitors, and the extent to which it has provided incremental sales to the category and trade. Identifying the source of volume gains is necessary to ensure that the overall strategy is on track – particularly if you have key brands already positioned in the same market or are looking for improved retail support.

All-channel coverage
A key advantage of Homescan is that it provides insights into buying behaviour across every type of purchase channel including: traditional supermarkets, specialist stores (bakeries, green grocers), pharmacies, convenience stores and mass merchandisers.

The consumer insights delivered by these consumer panels represent the definitive source for understanding consumer purchase behaviour and shopping patterns for any segment of the population across all retail outlet types.