In the CPG world, data is king—but navigating it can be tricky. NielsenIQ, Circana (formerly IRI), and SPINS are the biggest players when it comes to market research, offering both syndicated point-of-sale (POS) and consumer panel data. But what's the difference, and how can you use it? Let's dive into the world of market research and discover how to turn these valuable insights into winning strategies.

Why is NielsenIQ Data Useful?

Market research data from Nielsen and other providers, also known as syndicated data, is crucial for CPG brands looking to gain a comprehensive view of the market.

Unlike your internal data, it offers a market-wide perspective, including competitor performance. This can help you understand consumer demographics, preferences, and purchasing patterns across multiple retailers, which is crucial for targeted marketing and product development.

This holistic view provides you with key insights across distribution, pricing, and promotion.

Let’s take a look at these in more detail.

Distribution

Nielsen data reveals product availability and placement across various retailers and regions. This information helps you identify distribution gaps, opportunities for expansion, and how your product's presence compares to competitors.

For instance, you might notice your product category is growing rapidly in the Southwest region, where you currently have limited distribution, presenting a clear expansion opportunity.

Pricing

Market research data provides insights into pricing strategies across the entire market. You can see how your pricing compares to competitors, understand price elasticity in your category, and identify optimal price points.

Promotion

Data from Nielsen and other providers shows the impact of promotional activities on sales across the market. You can analyze which types of promotions are most effective in your category, how competitors' promotional strategies affect your sales, and identify the best timing for your own promotional efforts.

For example, you might discover that your competitor's 20% off promotion at Retailer X led to a 50% sales increase, informing your own promotional planning.

These insights are invaluable because they provide additional context. While your internal data tells you what's happening with your products, market research data tells you why it's happening and how it fits into the broader market landscape.

Types of Market Research Data: POS and Panel

Market research companies like Nielsen, Circana, and SPINS primarily offer two types of data: Point-of-Sale (POS) Data and panel data.

Point-of-Sale (POS) Data:

Nielsen and other providers gather POS data from various retail outlets, including supermarkets, drugstores, and mass merchandisers. This data provides detailed insights into which products consumers are buying, in what quantities, at what prices, and in which locations.

• Sales figures for specific products and categories
• Information on pricing, promotions, and distribution
• Store-level data for granular analysis

Consumer Panel Data:

Panel data is gathered from a representative sample of consumers who agree to have their purchases tracked over time. For example, the NielsenIQ Homescan Consumer Panel tracks consumer behavior from more than 250,000 households across 25 countries. This gives you deeper, qualitative insights, like:

• Demographic information about purchasers
• Data on brand loyalty and switching behavior
• Insights into consumer purchase frequency and basket composition

Each type of data serves different purposes and, when used together, provides a more complete picture of market dynamics and consumer behavior. POS data tells you what's being sold, while panel data helps you understand who's buying and why.

How to Leverage Nielsen Data

To get the most out of your data from Nielsen, SPINS, and Co., you need a solid data and analytics tool. After all, if you’re spending thousands of dollars on a report, you want to be sure you’re squeezing all the relevant insights out of it. That’s where Daasity comes in.

Daasity helps you analyze syndicated data and integrate it with your existing data, including retail data, ecommerce and Amazon. Instead of wrestling with spreadsheets, you can focus on what matters: understanding your market position, spotting trends, and making smart decisions around pricing and promotion.

Take Caulipower, for example. The healthy comfort food brand competes in the $6 billion frozen pizza market, where standing out is crucial. Caulipower uses Daasity to integrate data from multiple sources, including SPINS, Whole Foods, Walmart, Kroger, and Target.

By centralizing their SPINS data alongside other retailer information, Caulipower gained a 360° view of their market performance. This enables them to benchmark against competitors, spot opportunities for growth, and make data-driven decisions. Learn how they did it.

Unlock the Full Potential of Your Nielsen Data with Daasity

At Daasity, we help CPG brands make the most of their data. Whether you're working with Nielsen, Circana, SPINS, or your own retail partner data, we've got you covered. Our platform brings everything together, giving you a clear, unified view of your market performance.

Ready to see how Daasity can transform your approach to market data? We'd love to show you. Let's turn your data challenges into opportunities for growth.