Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Seven Sins by Nielsen in India

The Agency was Supposed to be among the Top Recalled Names in the Indian MR Landscape. Then Why is it being given Such a Unanimous Thumbs Down by Clients?

Where did they exactly go wrong? Well, there is no single answer to that; rather there are seven. Nielsen India has no problems in terms of recall, where it is among the top 3. Even in terms of quality of analysis, network and tools and techniques used, the research agency came out tops, being ranked at 4, 2 and 3 respectively. The trouble comes in the other factors that are so crucial for sustainability where Nielsen got a shocking thumbs down in terms of ranks, which are as follows – reliability and authenticity of data (14), cost effectiveness (15), time duration (19), transparency (14), favouritism (14), impact (17) and associations (14). The net result is that Nielsen gets the horribly unlucky rank of 13.

When you look closely at the parameters, one undercurrent that’s clearly visible is the lack of confidence in the research agency. This undercurrent was expected due to the flak that some of Nielsen’s surveys in the past have generated, but what was surprising was the degree. It would still be fresh in the minds of the industry how FMCG giants Dabur and Perfetti Van Melle India had taken up the cudgels against Nielsen for underreporting their sales numbers last year. It was also reported that they terminated the services of the agency. Dabur officials confirmed their displeasure when contacted by 4Ps B&M. In fact, another official from a research agency we contacted revealed that the list of clients exiting Nielsen’s services is not restricted to these two companies.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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