Business Wire: NPD Announces the Launch of Expanded Consumer Tracking Service for Wal-Mart and Sam's Club

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NPD Announces the Launch of Expanded Consumer Tracking Service for Wal-Mart and Sam's Club

BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- The NPD Group, Inc., leading provider of market research, announces the launch of its customized Consumer Tracking Service for Wal-Mart and Sam's Club. The service is a collaborative effort between Wal-Mart and Sam's Club for vendors doing business with the retailers.

As Wal-Mart's preferred provider of consumer tracking data, NPD has created the new service based on Wal-Mart's and Sam's Club's consumer segments, departmental structure, and geographic trading areas. The service will offer Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, and their vendor partners an extensive cross-category view of what's happening across all consumer segments of the marketplace and all consumer demographics. Additionally, it will give Wal-Mart's and Sam's Club's selected suppliers access to the only consumer data that reflects Wal-Mart's department structure and geographies, as well as the Wal-Mart consumer segments.

NPD's Consumer Tracking Service for Wal-Mart will provide information on consumer purchasing across a broad spectrum of industries including the automotive aftermarket, consumer technology, entertainment (music, film & video, games), fashion (apparel and footwear), foodservice, home (home textiles, small appliances, home improvement, lawn and garden), toys, and wireless handsets. NPD is also introducing a customized service based on its consumption information for food and beverages.

"Winning with the Brand Aspirational consumer is critical for Wal-Mart," said Paul Cantrell, Wal-Mart Global Team Leader, The NPD Group, Inc. "We are pleased to be introducing this new service that can help Wal-Mart and their category advisors work together to achieve this objective. We truly believe that this will go a long way to establishing a common language for collaboration between Wal-Mart and its select vendors."

"As a Wal-Mart vendor, we are committed to helping them stay on top of their growth opportunities," said Robyn Cushing, Shopper Insights Manager - Wal-Mart, Unilever. "This new service allows us to work closely with Wal-Mart to develop programs that meet both marketing and merchandising objectives for Wal-Mart and Unilever brands."

The new Consumer Tracking Service for Wal-Mart and Sam's Club is derived from NPD's panel of over 3 million consumers who report what they purchased, where, for what price, and more.

About The NPD Group, Inc.

The NPD Group is the leading provider of reliable and comprehensive consumer and retail information for a wide range of industries. Today, more than 1,600 manufacturers, retailers, and service companies rely on NPD to help them drive critical business decisions at the global, national, and local market levels. NPD helps our clients to identify new business opportunities and guide product development, marketing, sales, merchandising, and other functions. Information is available for the following industry sectors: automotive, beauty, commercial technology, consumer technology, entertainment, fashion, food and beverage, foodservice, home, office supplies, software, sports, toys, and wireless. For more information, contact us or visit http://www.npd.com/.