The NPD Group, a leading provider of market research, this month launched a 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.

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