IRI and Research Now Expand Alliance to Leverage 1.1 Million U.S. Consumer Panelists for Deeper Insights into Actual Shopper Behavior

CHICAGO & DALLAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–IRI^®, the global leader in innovative solutions and services
for consumer, retail, media and over-the-counter healthcare companies,
and Research Now^®, the global leader in digital data
collection to power analytics and insights, announced that they are
expanding their relationship to create the CPG industry’s most robust
and unique data set. The broadly enhanced capability combines 1.1
million of Research Now’s consumer panelists with IRI’s purchase-based
data assets and predictive models, which provides CPG marketers insights
into consumer motivations, psychographics, lifestage and lifestyle
characteristics, shopping behavior and media habits that have been
unavailable until now.

This significant expansion of an existing alliance allows manufacturers
and retailers to identify and target consumers and shoppers based on
their predicted purchase behavior across more than 750 product
categories and subcategories and nearly 9,000 individual brands, as well
as their tendency to shop at specific retail outlets and banners. The
expanded set of predictive models can now be leveraged to provide deeper
analytics, better attitudinal-based insights, access to actual purchase
behavior, the ability to predict which retailers will be shopped, and to
quickly find target consumers without having to conduct a sample survey.

“By incorporating the Research Now consumer panel, we have enabled an
unsurpassed opportunity to target shoppers and leverage their purchase
behavior to bring greater enhancement to sample selection based on
actual purchase behavior,” said Robert I. Tomei, president of Consumer &
Shopper Marketing for IRI. “This is a significant industry innovation in
the media and marketing research industry, and this expanded
relationship with Research Now exemplifies IRI’s passion for big data,
dedication to analytics and strategic commitment to evolving market
research that unlocks new levels of insights that drive our clients’
growth.”

With this unprecedented and greatly expanded dataset, CPG marketers will
be able to increase accuracy by having access to:

• Deeper profiling of high-propensity shoppers and hard-to-find segments
  for sample selection and marketing plan activation with a limited need
  for pre-screening
• Purchase and segment-based targeting for qualitative and quantitative
  research
• More granular survey results that demonstrate marketing impact on
  high- or low-propensity shoppers

This insights database brings multiple IRI purchased-based assets to
Research Now’s online and mobile-based consumer panel, providing the
ability to identify shoppers who:

• Have the highest propensity to purchase a product
• Shop a particular retail chain, channel or specific store, and to what
  magnitude
• Tried a new product, spend a particular amount on a product or
  category, buy competitive products or are lapsed buyers

The database employs IRI ProScores™, the industry’s most advanced
purchase-based, predictive, shopper insights and activation solution
used for target audience selection. This partnership enables CPG
manufacturers and retailers, and their marketing agencies, to identify
shoppers with the highest dollar opportunity and accurately engage them
to better understand their shopping behavior by gathering insight into
the influences that inform behavior across the ever-evolving path to
purchase journey.

By leveraging cutting-edge analytical techniques and rich data assets,
including purchase data from the IRI Consumer Network™, IRI estimates
all 130 million U.S. households’ propensity to purchase across a broad
set of CPG categories, subcategories, brands and retailers. These retail
audiences are projected from the IRI Consumer Network to all U.S. adults
and matched with more than 1.1 million U.S. Research Now panelists. This
extensive Research Now U.S. panel match offers marketers
respondent-level integration of customer survey data with modeled
behavioral data, marrying the “why behind the buy” with “the buy” and
enabling real, actionable insights from verified panelists.

“With the largest, best profiled global research panel, Research Now
fuels solutions,” said Greg Ellis, executive vice president of
Integrated Data Solutions for Research Now. “We are proud to serve more
than 3,700 customers, including the world’s leading market research,
advertising, consulting and corporate clients, to power innovation like
IRI’s ProScores brand and category purchase propensity scores. Based
upon a recent validation test among a matched sample of nearly 400,000
Research Now panelists, we improved targeting efficiency by 250 percent.
By screening for energy drink buyers among those with the highest
ProScores purchase propensity, we achieved 20 percent qualifying
incidence in identifying an 8 percent incidence target.”

By appending IRI ProScores to the Research Now panel, IRI will be able
to provide new and expanded survey-based research insights that both
complement and extend beyond capabilities currently available through
the IRI Consumer Network. Further, it provides never-before realized
granular insight into the influences that inform behavior across the
shopper path to purchase.

For more information about this new offering, please visit: https://www.researchnow.com/sampleplus-solutions/

About Research Now

Research Now Group, Inc., is the global leader in digital data
collection to power analytics and insights. It enables confident,
data-driven decision-making for its 3,700 market research, consulting,
media, and corporate clients through access to millions of
deeply-profiled business professionals and consumers. The company has
provided high-quality, proprietary, research-only online panel sample
since 2001, and currently operates in over 40 countries from more than
20 offices around the globe with locations in the Americas, Europe, the
Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. Research Now is recognized as the
quality, scale, and customer satisfaction leader in the market research
industry. For more information, please go to www.researchnow.com.

About the IRI Partner Ecosystem:

IRI fundamentally believes that delivering differentiated growth for
clients requires deep, highly integrated partnering with a variety of
best-of-breed companies. As such, IRI works closely with a broad range
of industry leaders to create innovative joint solutions, services and
access to capabilities to help its clients more effectively compete in
their various markets and exceed their growth objectives. IRI is
committed to its partnership philosophy and continues to actively
enhance its ecosystem of partners through alliances, joint ventures,
acquisitions and affiliations. The IRI Partner Ecosystem includes such
companies as Adobe, The Boston Consulting Group, comScore, Experian,
GfK, Gigwalk, Ipsos, Kantar Shopcom, MasterCard Advisors, MaxPoint,
Millward Brown Digital, Mu Sigma, Oracle, Research Now, SPINS, Univision and
others.

About IRI:

IRI is a leading provider of big data, predictive analytics and
forward-looking insights that help CPG, OTC health care organizations,
retailers and media companies to grow their businesses. With the largest
repository of purchase, media, social, causal and loyalty data, all
integrated on an on-demand, cloud-based technology platform, IRI helps
to guide its more than 5,000 clients around the world in their quests to
remain relentlessly relevant, capture market share, connect with
consumers and deliver market-leading growth. A confluence of major
external events—a revolution in consumer buying, big data coming into
its own, advanced analytics and automated consumer activation—is leading
to a seismic shift in drivers of success in all industries. Ensure your
business can leverage data at www.iriworldwide.com.

Contacts

IRI
Shelley Hughes
E-mail: Shelley.Hughes@IRIworldwide.com
Phone:
+1 312.474.3675
or
Research Now
Brianna Supulski
E-mail:
bsupulski@researchnow.com
Phone:
+1 214.365.7585