IRI Enhances Consumer and Shopper Segmentation Solution with Survey Sampling International

CHICAGO— IRI®, the global leader in innovative solutions and services for consumer, retail, media and over-the-counter healthcare companies, announced Tuesday a new alliance with Survey Sampling International (SSI), the global leader in data solutions and technology for consumer and business-to-business survey research. Through the relationship, SSI’s 7 million U.S. consumer panelists can be classified by IRI’s industry-leading consumer and shopper segmentations, such as e-commerce behavior with IRI e-ShopperLink™ and the purchase dynamics of millennials with IRI MillenniaLink™ to create on-demand, targeted and personalized analyses.

For the past two years, IRI conducted surveys among millennials and online shoppers to develop a deep understanding of motivations among these key groups of consumers, who are increasingly important to manufacturers and retailers. Through SSI’s on-demand targeting capabilities, IRI will now be able to classify respondents from SSI’s panel into various segments of the population based on their characteristics of actual behavior in virtually real time, followed immediately with more in-depth questions intended to address specific business issues.

“This partnership with SSI continues the development of IRI’s new and significantly expanded insight and activation capabilities that provide our clients the opportunity to better understand the changing consumer and shopper landscape, the new shopper journey and how to ‘win the shopper’ in today’s new world,” said Robert I. Tomei, president of Consumer & Shopper Marketing for IRI. “By applying our advanced analytical solutions and predictive models, which are based on actual behavior to large databases, we can offer our clients a meaningful way to engage their consumer and shopper in new, innovative ways.”

“Augmenting our leading data asset with IRI enables us to provide an increasingly comprehensive view into consumer attributes, providing maximum value for our 3,000+ clients,” said Bob Fawson, chief product officer for SSI. “Insights on particular trends or issues that affect segments such as these are imperative as we expand our footprint. IRI’s segmentation solutions expand our scale and size among CPG marketers and manufacturers as well as retailers. It accelerates us toward our goal of building the world’s leading data solutions company with the world’s best people, panels and technology.”

MillenniaLink Segmentation

Millennials are the largest generation since the baby boomers, representing nearly 30 percent of the population and have purchasing power that will top $200 billion by 2017. Despite their size and influence, CPG decision makers often treat millennials as a homogeneous group.

To understand differences within this key demographic group, IRI surveyed millennials from the United States about their attitudes and behaviors across all facets of their lives. IRI’s research revealed that millennials are not a one-size-fits-all generation. Instead, they fall into six unique and targetable segments that offer different leverageable opportunities for manufacturer and retailer business growth. The six segments reflect an array of lifestyle attitudes, social connection, confidence, health and wellness, financial habits, shopping styles, and digital savvy that exist among millennials.

e-ShopperLink Segmentation

According to a BI Intelligence report, e-grocery sales are expected to grow by 21 percent annually through 2018. Companies that want to harness that growth will require a keen eye toward targeting the right people, in the right way, with the right product offerings and messages.

IRI updated its survey among U.S. consumers about their online shopping attitudes and behaviors in order to improve understanding of online trends for CPG manufacturers and retailers. Through the survey results, IRI identified six unique segments that reflect an array of online shopping attitudes, drivers, shopping styles and mobile usage for shopping online for specific grocery categories.

By expanding IRI’s e-ShopperLink and MillenniaLink segmentation data to SSI panelists, marketers can conduct a range of survey types such as concept and product testing and ad testing. By classifying consumers based on IRI’s syndicated segmentations, CPG clients will have more flexibility in the types of surveys and questions they can ask and a broader, more targeted base of potential respondents.

“It’s critical that retailers and manufacturers understand the impact millennials and e-commerce have on sales,” said Carl Edstrom, senior vice president and principal of Survey Solutions for IRI. “Both provide significant opportunities, which is why it’s imperative that marketers use the most targeted solutions to create actionable product development plans and marketing communication strategies. SSI’s extensive consumer panel enables IRI to create granular insights in ways we couldn’t otherwise. By leveraging IRI’s e-ShopperLink and MillenniaLink segmentations with SSI’s panel, clients will have tremendous opportunity to better understand and target these key segments as well as capture growth within them.”

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, Place IQ, 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.