Nielsen Homescan celebrates 21st birthday in Australia

26 November 2007
Sydney

It’s been 21 years since Nielsen Australia established and launched the world’s first electronic consumer panel – Homescan, in Sydney and Melbourne. To mark the occasion, Nielsen celebrated Homescan’s coming of age with a select number of FMCG clients and staff at an exclusive gathering at the spectacular Opera Point Marquee in Sydney on Thursday evening, 1 November. A similar celebration was also held in Melbourne on Thursday evening, 15 November at The Deck in St. Kilda.

Homescan was launched in Australia in 1986 as a world-first electronic consumer panel, comprising 1,200 households in metropolitan Sydney and Melbourne. Twenty years later, in May 2006, Nielsen Australia achieved a major Homescan milestone when the panel was expanded to 10,000 households, and another world-first - the establishment of the biggest per capita consumer panel in the world.

“Nielsen is the leader in Consumer Panel Services globally, with Homescan in over 270,000 households across 27 countries,” said Glen Murphy, Managing Director, Pacific. “In Australia, our local Homescan consumer panel has significantly developed and grown over the past 21 years – a testament to the Homescan team - spanning Panel Management, Measurement Science, Operations, Client Service and Product Management - and of course our clients, many of whom have been Homescan supporters from the very beginning.”

“In the year ahead, Homescan will remain a key area of focus for our business and we will continue to invest in and develop the service to ensure our clients receive the most complete market coverage and in-depth understanding of consumer purchasing dynamics to ensure the success of their brands,” said Murphy.

Nielsen Homescan in Australia – a brief history:

• 1986: BrandScan was established and launched. It was the first electronic panel in the world and was launched with 1,200 households in metropolitan Sydney and Melbourne.
• In those days, the team consisted of two client service staff, two secretaries doing all the presentation typing, and one chartist hand drawing all the presentation charts.
• The office was equipped with a total of three IBM PCs – one set up for development work, two for household polling. None of these PCs had as much processing power as a current mobile phone!
• 1989: BrandScan expanded to 2,400 households which also extended to Brisbane.
• 1994: Nielsen acquired the BrandScan business following a period of financial turmoil with the controversial, sudden death of AGB McNair’s (BrandScan’s) owner, Robert Maxwell in 1991.
• The Nielsen and BrandScan teams were merged and the product was rebranded ‘Homescan’.
• 1998: The Homescan panel doubled in size to 5,000 households.
• 2005: Homescan was expanded to 7,500 households and a read on Aldi was added.
• 2006: Homescan expanded to 10,000 households – making Homescan in Australia the biggest consumer panel per capita in the world.
• 2007: The Homescan team now comprises Measurement Science, Panel Management (including a team of helpline staff and recruiters), Operations, Client Service and Product Management. The team is made up of around 60 full-time employees plus another 30 in client service.
• Globally, the Homescan service is available in 27 countries, and 270,000 households worldwide

About the Nielsen Homescan consumer panel

By providing a complete view of how consumers interact with stores, brands and categories in the context of their household's consumption habits, Nielsen's Homescan consumer panel assists FMCG clients by identifying opportunities and turning them into sales.

Homescan (now comprising of 10,000 households across Australia) is Nielsen's leading-edge consumer panel designed to monitor and understand household purchasing of packaged grocery and fresh produce.

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 the ability 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.

Homescan can be applied to business issues in the following ways:

• Understanding the key drivers of sales: How many households are buying a category, how much they buy and who they are. Homescan data will establish what levels of loyalty exist, and what other brands your brand buyers are purchasing.
• 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.
• 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.
• Evaluating new product success: Homescan will determine if the trial and repeat rates of new product lines are acceptable to sustain the brand in the long term by comparing against normative data compiled from numerous launches over the years.
• All-channel coverage: Homescan 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.

To find out more about how Nielsen Homescan can benefit your business, email shan.xifaras@nielsen.com

About The Nielsen Company
The Nielsen Company is a global information and media company with leading market positions and recognised brands in marketing information (ACNielsen), media information (Nielsen Media Research), business publications (Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, Adweek), trade shows and the newspaper sector (Scarborough Research). The privately held company is active in more than 100 countries, with headquarters in Haarlem, the Netherlands, and New York, USA. For more information, please visit, www.nielsen.com.