Abstract:

This paper is in three parts, to be delivered in turn by the three speakers. First, we comment on the fact that the development of computing and of scanners has revolutionized both market and media research. We point out that the boundary between the two fields is becoming increasingly indistinct: market researchers are finding themselves more and more involved with media matters, and media researchers with marketing matters. To illustrate this, we describe two services of Nielsen Marketing Research (U.S.): the Scantrack store movement service based on retail scanning, and the Nielsen Household Panel which employs in-home scanners to record product purchasing: and we present two new practical applications of these research services which can contribute to the assessment of television advertising. The first application is experimental multimarket testing to assess the relative effectiveness of television plans, in terms of campaign testing, weight testing, or interactions with other media. The second application is a syndicated media/product service, newly introduced in the U.S., based on the Household Panel. This service, called HOME*SCAN, links product purchasing data on an aggregated (12 month) basis to media data collected from individual adult members of the Panel. Prospective television applications of the HOME*SCAN data are discussed.