Group Press Releases
ACNielsen and Market Facts Announce Breakthrough Approach to Understanding Consumer Behaviour
01 February 2000
Jointly Developed Market Research Process Provides Insight Into Brand Potential By Linking Consumer Attitudes and Actual Behavior
Schaumburg, IL., February 1, 2000 — ACNielsen U.S., an operating unit of ACNielsen Corporation (NYSE: ART), and Market Facts, Inc., a subsidiary of AEGIS plc (London Stock Exchange: AGS), today announced the launch of SEGWAYä. This jointly-developed market research service provides marketers with the best ever understanding of the relationship between consumers’ attitudes and their behavior in the marketplace.
The new process leverages the key strengths of each organization. ACNielsen is the global leader in understanding sales of consumer products and the key drivers of those sales. Market Facts, through its proprietary Conversion Model segmentation, is the leader in measuring and explaining consumers’ commitment to brands they use and receptiveness to brands they do not use. SEGWAY successfully links these measures — consumers’ psychological bond with brands and their actual behavior. This new segmentation capability will give marketers significant new direction in reaching receptive and attractive market segments with appropriate marketing programs.
Kimberly-Clark was one of the beta test clients for SEGWAY. Jeff Drake, Director of Marketing Research at Kimberly-Clark, said, "This is a breakthrough approach that is helping us in our efforts to become precision marketers. With SEGWAY we are able to do a much better job than ever before at determining how to allocate our marketing resources, develop the most effective messages for each consumer segment, and build overall long-term brand equity. I have never seen any approach that comes close to the power of SEGWAY."
The first step in the SEGWAY process is a commitment-based segmentation of consumers. Commitment is a multi-dimensional measure of the psychological relationship between a consumer and each brand used. The stronger that relationship, the more likely a consumer is to stay with a brand and resist competitive marketing efforts. Each brand’s non-customers are segmented by their "openness" to the brand. "Open" non-customers are good prospects for acquisition, while "Unavailables" have their minds closed to the brand.
The second step consists of linking the Conversion segments with the ACNielsen Homescanä consumer panel. This enables each attitude segment to be viewed in terms of the dollar volume it represents.
In the final step, SEGWAY enables marketers to precisely measure their efforts at managing each segment.
Tom Payne, president of Market Facts, said, "SEGWAY is the fulfillment of a ten year dream to bridge the gap between attitudes and behavior. There’s a famous quote from an advertising industry legend that ‘half of all ad dollars are wasted; the problem is I don’t know which half.’ SEGWAY will go a long way toward taking the guesswork out of the equation for marketers."
Steve Schmidt, president of ACNielsen U.S., called SEGWAY a significant achievement. "SEGWAY represents the culmination of two years of hard work between ACNielsen and Market Facts in which this innovative process was developed, tested and validated. This linkage between consumer attitudes and actual behavior solves one of the most important problems marketers face."
SEGWAY is targeted toward consumer packaged goods companies and is available now.
ACNielsen, offering services in over 100 countries and with 1998 revenues of $1.4 billion, is the global leader in delivering market research, information and analysis to the consumer products and services industries.
Market Facts is a leading provider of custom attitude research. With 1998 revenues of $138 million, Market Facts is the fifth largest custom research firm in the U.S. It holds the exclusive North and South American license for The Conversion Model, which has been used in over 2,000 research studies worldwide.
