What are the primary data sources for shopper insights?

CMA’s Shopper Insights framework states that actionable insights are developed by integrating three complementary data sets: 1) retailer loyalty-card transactions, 2) syndicated household panel data (e.g., Nielsen Homescan), and 3) syndicated POS scanner data (e.g., Nielsen Scantrack/IRI). Together they reveal shopper “who,” “how,” and “what/where” respectively. No other primary source is considered essential at this stage.

A. Lists the correct three sources but repeats “Retailer Loyalty Data,” so it is not an accurate statement.

C. Omits syndicated POS data, leaving an incomplete set of primary sources.

D. Contains only loyalty data, missing panel and POS, so cannot deliver full shopper insight coverage.

1. Category Management Association, Certified Category Manager (CCM) Training Manual, Module “Shopper Insights,” 2022 ed., pp. 11-13.

2. NielsenIQ White Paper “From Data to Insight,” 2021, pp. 4-6.

3. Ailawadi, Kusum et al., “Shopper Insights from Loyalty Card Data,” Journal of Retailing 93(3), 2017, pp. 264-266. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2017.05.003