IRI (company)
 | |
| Private | |
| Industry | Market Research |
| Founded | 1979 |
| Headquarters | Chicago, Illinois, United States |
Key people | Andrew Appel, President and Chief Executive Officer [1] |
| Owner | New Mountain Capital |
Number of employees | 3,600 [2] |
| Website |
www |
IRI is an American market research company which provides clients with consumer, shopper, and retail market intelligence and analysis focused on the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry. IRI’s clients include 95 percent of the Fortune Global 500 CPG, retail and healthcare companies.[3] The firm operates in 58 countries through stand-alone operations, wholly owned subsidiaries, partnerships and alliances.
History
IRI was formed Information Resources, Inc. ("IRI") in Chicago in 1979[4] with the introduction of the BehaviorScan service, a testing service that quantifies the ROI of a new TV advertising program. IRI became a public company in 1983.[5] By 1993 Fortune Magazine had named IRI a "company to watch" for expanding into two of its biggest markets: analyzing nationwide scanner data on consumer products and producing computer software. At that time slightly more than half IRI's revenues came from Infoscan, its marketing data service.[6] Shortly thereafter in 1995, IRI rolled out its ScanKey panel service, in which consumers nationwide could scan the barcode of their CPG product purchases at home to enable purchase tracking by various household demographics. In late 2003, IRI was acquired by Symphony Technology Group, run by Dr. Romesh Wadhwani.[7] The new leadership led to a focus on IRI's predictive analytic applications.
In April 2013, SymphonyIRI Group, Inc. announced that it is rebranding as IRI. [8]
In September 2013, IRI acquired Aztec, a provider of market measurement and related services for consumer packaged goods (CPG), liquor and pharmaceutical manufacturers and retailers in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden and the United Kingdom. This was the largest acquisition in IRI’s history and significantly expanded IRI’s geographic presence. [9]
Products and Publications
- Infoscan - Each week several thousand grocery, drug, and department stores deliver the product data collected by their scanners. IRI sorts, analyzes, and verifies product price and volume, and then delivers final Infoscan sales information to its customers via tape, disk, or on-line service.[6]
- Consumer Network - This consumer panel provides a view into consumer behavior by various household demographic groups. This platform is supplemented by a series of integrated insights, shopper and specialty panels, which are enabled through a new portable, personal collection device.[10]
- IRI Liquid Data (ILD) – The Liquid Data platform offers data management capabilities driven through hardware, software, patented algorithms, industry models, data integration and supporting applications that are offered as a hosted service or as a separate infrastructure within the customer’s legacy data environment. The capability platform holds data in a flat or unstructured universe of points and leverages predictive automated analytics to generate information and insights to support specific decisions in minutes.[10]
References
- ↑ SymphonyIRI appoints Appel as new CEO
- ↑ IRI Company Overview - Bloomberg.
- ↑ About IRI.
- ↑ Information Resources, Inc.
- ↑ Honomichl Top 50 Report, 2012.
- 1 2 Fortune
- ↑ "Gingko Acquisition Corp. Successfully Closes Tender Offer for Information Resources; Gingko Acquisition Corp. Also Announces Subsequent Offering Period" (Press release). Gingko Acquisition Corp. 3 November 2003.
- ↑ Supermarket News.
- ↑ IRI.
- 1 2 Honomichl Top 50 Report, 2012.