CHICAGO -- Information Resources Inc. (IRI) has announced that weather conditions and gas prices are now integrated within IRI's Market Measurement service, leveraging IRI's Liquid Data information and insights platform. For the first time, IRI clients can now integrate the weather data and gas data into a variety of IRI solutions, including enterprise software, such as IRI Market Advantage, or as a data layer within custom consulting and analytics projects.
These new causal factors represent IRI's ongoing efforts to make available information on additional drivers to sales. For example, the weather data enable clients to answer questions about how specific temperature levels impact sales, what categories or items are most influenced by specific weather conditions, and how those shifts vary by geography and client.
Historically, gas and weather data have not been available as part of an integrated point-of-sale (POS) solution, or the data were gathered manually, requiring countless hours of effort. The lack of data availability and integration has prevented the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry from understanding the impact gas prices and weather conditions have on consumer motivations and purchase behavior.
"In the past, 'notable changes in the weather or gas prices' might be cited as the source for unexplained dramatic shifts in shopping behavior," said senior vice president of product management, Clay Dodson, IRI. "IRI's fully integrated weather and gas price data immediately support or refute those assumptions. Understanding the sales impact due to weather and gas varies by market, but it's important to have visibility into integrated data sets while sales or merchandising plans are established. For some CPG categories, we've seen specific weather and gas conditions consistently occur during their best and worst weeks, four to six years running."
Weather data are provided by AccuWeather and enable IRI to deliver a multitude of attributes, including temperature, precipitation, humidity, snowfall, minutes of sunshine and departure from normal to highlight weather extremes.
IRI's gas data are derived from the Oil Price Information Service (OPIS) and are sourced from more than 120,000 gas stations. Price information is available for gas grades, including regular, midgrade, premium and diesel.
IRI's weather and gas data packages complement category sales from a measurement and predictive perspective. When used in conjunction with additional IRI data sources, CPG marketers get a comprehensive view of the marketplace and a better understanding of sales catalysts and how to effectively manage sales drivers.
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