CHICAGO -- Information Resources Inc. (IRI) yesterday launched AllScan Convenience Reviews, which it said is the industry's first service that provides 100% point-of-sale (POS)-based convenience store coverage with weekly data for more than 250 product categories and insights for more than 50 states and local markets.
This syndicated convenience tracking service combines POS data from more than 11,000 sample c-stores, including chains and independents, from the IRI AllScan Convenience Store Tracking Service with the visualization and presentation capabilities [image-nocss] offered by the IRI InfoScan platform to deliver information in a single syndicated solution.
Insights into brand and category sales performance for the convenience channel have traditionally been costly, time-consuming and limited in scope, leaving retailers and manufacturers to rely on small, manually collected samples to understand what is happening and why, IRI said. To address this issue, IRI has installed POS scanners in independent and chain c-stores to eliminate the need for audits and to offer faster, more accurate and more granular coverage of the entire TDLinx/NACS-defined channel, which includes more than 145,000 chain and independent stores.
The result is that manufacturers, retailers and sales and marketing executives now have the ability to accurately analyze and make better decisions regarding weekly sales trends, price, promotion and distribution in more than 250 product categories at the local market level, said IRI. The IRI AllScan Convenience Store Tracking service is now fully integrated with InfoScan food, drug and mass merchandiser data for benchmarking and cross-channel analysis.
AllScan Convenience Reviews enable users to quickly identify distribution opportunities, key pricing trends and sales dynamics, so that retailers and manufacturers can focus their time and energy on products and categories that drive the most revenue and margin, said IRI president and CEO John Freeland. Ultimately, the service provides users with previously unavailable insights to outsmart the competition on multiple fronts, including product distribution, promotion planning and new product execution.
The c-store tracking service is part of the IRI InfoScan Reviews portfolio, which delivers scanner-based data in relevant category definitions with a standard product hierarchy, a measure set and a list of geographies that provide visibility into grocery, drug, mass merchandiser and convenience channels.
AllScan Convenience Reviews empowers manufacturers and retailers to more effectively:
Monitor trends across channels, categories, products and competitive factors for effective marketing and sales planning. Analyze sales and promotion results to inform and influence future actions utilizing single week data points before and after major events. Develop integrated strategic and tactical plans across food, drug, mass and convenience store channels using a single information platform Identify major growth opportunities and marketing mix improvements for new and existing products and categories. Evaluate and monitor new product launches as they are being launched and make execution corrections mid-stream. Increase sales force efficiency by allocating resources to critical sales drivers and local opportunities. Measure market share at retail across expanding and emerging channels Understand impact of competitive channels.IRI is a major provider of consumer, shopper and retail market information, insights and decision solutions to the consumer packaged goods (CPG), healthcare and retail companies.
Members help make our journalism possible. Become a CSP member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.