ACNielsen Expands Industry Focus

STAMFORD, Conn.

ACNielsen U.S., a sister company of Convenience Store News said yesterday it has added London-based BP Plc, Baltimore-based Crown Central Petroleum Corp. and West Des Moines, Iowa-based Krause Gentle Corp. its Convenience Track Account Level Services (ALS).

The announcement was made yesterday at the National Association of Convenience Stores' (NACS) annual convention in Las Vegas.

Convenience Track ALS provides sales reports and promotional activity information for all UPC-coded products sold by specific retailers organized by the total retailer and in specific markets. With the addition of BP, Crown Petroleum, and Krause Gentle's 305 Kum & Go stores, ACNielsen will offer 69 such reports, the most in the consumer packaged goods industry.

"We are pleased to partner with ACNielsen in making our information available to the manufacturers we work with. ACNielsen's ability to report our information according to our merchandising area assists us in our category management process and enables our many manufacturer partners to identify opportunities to grow their categories," said Matt Chandik, director of convenience retail for BP, which operates 3,500 stores in the United States. "That makes our collaborative efforts much more productive."

Convenience Track, which celebrates its third-year anniversary this month, utilizes both scanning data as well as traditional store audits to measure sales. Since only 40 percent of convenience stores use point-of-sale scanners, it is essential that audits be conducted in non-scanning stores to derive the most accurate measurement of sales in the convenience store universe.

Convenience Track is also the only service to provide sales information for the convenience channel on a local market level, with reporting in 30 markets for non-alcoholic beverages, candy, other tobacco, ice cream, frozen novelties, energy bars, and, in 2002, cookies, crackers, nuts, meat snacks and other salty snacks. The service provides information on beer sales in 22 markets.
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