NIQ extends ‘Grocery Multiple’ sales data to more retailers

NIQ has expanded the breadth of its data on the performance of fmcg categories and brands to take in the sales Aldi, Lidl, Poundland, Amazon and Farmfoods for the first time.

The five join Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons, Co-op, Waitrose, M&S, Iceland, Ocado, Boots, Superdrug and Booths as retailers whose sales help make up NIQ’s Grocery Multiple Channel data, used by both suppliers and retailers.

It means the new retailers have agreed to supply EPoS data on what is going through the tills, with the exception of Farmfoods, for which a “form of estimation” is being used, according to NIQ UK & Ireland retail services director Ben Morrison.

He said Farmfoods was selected as “a retailer we believe we can estimate for accurately”, while the likes of B&M and Home Bargains were “complex in terms of ranging in sales cycles” and “quite hard to estimate for”.

“Historically, discounters have been outside of the EPoS tracking,” said Morrison.

Their sales data would now contribute to “a market view against which retailers and suppliers benchmark their performance, down to a weekly level and down to items, with robustness and granularity”, he added.

The new retailers have been added to NIQ’s Grocery Multiple Channel as of this week, including three years of historic data.

“Most suppliers and retailers look across three years of performance,” said Morrison. “So, with such a big increase in universe, we update the full three years’ of history.

“Effectively, we’re going back to the industry and saying: This is the actual last three-year scenario.”

He said it could reveal some “different trend and growth patterns” and “that’s why it’s quite a big reset”.

NIQ’s Grocery Multiple Channel is separate to its monthly ‘Total Till’ market update. That covers sales by retailer and already includes Aldi and Lidl, but is based on consumer panel tracking rather EPoS data provided by the retailers.