New York-based Nielsen announced the official roll-out of its U.S. eCommerce measurement solution, delivering a comprehensive total consumer view of 90 percent of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) online sales within the U.S. market.

Nielsen's U.S. eCommerce solution is a multi-sourced tool that brings together robust data from a variety of resources to gain an accurate read of the digital marketplace. This multi-sourced approach includes online purchase data (ePOS) and consumer-sourced data sets including e-receipts, Nielsen's Homescan and other Nielsen proprietary consumer data.

A diverse set of e-receipt partners provides a demographically balanced panel and stability against market shifts and development within the evolving digital marketplace, it says. Marking an important milestone in its mission to provide a total consumer measurement view, Nielsen's solution links item descriptions to known UPC codes where available, enabling comparisons of online and offline performance, the market research firm says.

Currently, Nielsen's eCommerce solution captures sales data for the top FMCG product categories sold online platforms, including pure play, brick and click, direct to consumer, marketplaces and more. Within the industry, this is the only solution that attempts to align to client category definitions, helping clients compare their e-commerce and in-store performance, Nielsen says. In totality, this solution allows users to more easily benchmark and identify growth opportunities, assess, evaluate and gain insights into how to improve online performance, it adds.

"We are committed to providing our clients with a holistic eCommerce measurement solution to help them gain a stronger foothold within the digital retail marketplace," said Chris Morley, U.S. buy president at Nielsen, in a statement. "Combined with 90 years of product coding experience and the industry's largest global product reference database, our eCommerce solution offers the most complete and integrated view of online and in-store metrics. Through our multi-sourced approach, we've invested in creating a solution that has room to grow and adapt to the evolving eCommerce landscape, allowing us to maintain a clear and uninterrupted view of ‘what's next’ in this space."

With this launch, Nielsen also released its first set of eCommerce data for public distribution, revealing a total consumer view of the market through online and in-store performance of select FMCG categories. 

Despite an overall slowdown of in-store sales in the U.S. FMCG market, Nielsen's view into eCommerce tells a more positive tale, showcasing growth within specific product categories, the market research firm states.

Compared to the relatively flat growth in the traditional brick and mortar grocery category, in 2016, eCommerce actually drove 1 percent of topline growth for grocery, according to Nielsen eCommerce data for the 52 weeks ending Dec. 31, 2016.  Grocery consumers are migrating online and according to the 2017 Nielsen FMI Digitally Engaged Food Shopper Report, by 2025, the share of online grocery spending could reach $100 billion in annual consumer sales. The bottom line: eCommerce has become 'the' crucial channel to watch and is primed to change the negative growth story for the FMCG market, which makes eCommerce performance metrics no longer a "nice to have," but an essential part of the success equation for everyone in the retail industry, Nielsen says.

Nielsen's eCommerce solution is now available in the U.S. market. For additional information visit nielsen.com/us/en/solutions/capabilities/ecommerce.html