Navigating Retail Channel Data 

Understanding which retail channels offer syndicated data can make or break your market intelligence strategy. The reality is complex. Data availability varies across channels, and the right mix often depends on how you connect consumer packaged goods (CPG) data with AI-driven analytics. 

Core Brick-and-Mortar Channels: The Foundation of FMCG Data 

Most CPG companies rely heavily on point-of-sale scanner data from traditional retail outlets. Both NielsenIQ and Circana provide robust coverage across these essential channels, offering manufacturers detailed insights into performance metrics, market share, and consumer purchasing patterns. 

Primary Channels with Comprehensive Coverage: 

The grocery sector remains the cornerstone of most FMCG data strategies. Both major data providers offer extensive retailer-level detail, including major chains like Kroger, Safeway, and regional players. This coverage forms the backbone of multi-outlet universe studies that many brands depend on for strategic planning. 

Mass merchandisers, led by Walmart, represent another critical data source. Given Walmart’s dominance in the retail landscape, access to this channel’s performance data is essential for understanding market dynamics. Both providers offer account-level granularity for key players in this space. 

Drug store chains provide valuable insights into health and beauty categories, while dollar stores have become increasingly important as they expand their food and consumable offerings. Club stores like Costco and Sam’s Club offer unique bulk purchasing insights that are particularly valuable for understanding different consumer shopping missions. 

Military commissaries represent a specialized but important channel for brands with significant presence in these outlets, offering insights into a unique consumer demographic. 

Digital Commerce: The Evolving Landscape 

E-commerce presents the most complex data landscape, with rapid evolution in available sources and methodologies. Traditional brick-and-mortar retailers increasingly blend online and offline fulfillment, making it challenging to separate pure online sales from store-based transactions. 

Click-and-collect services, curbside pickup, and ship-from-store fulfillment often get captured within traditional brick-and-mortar reporting. However, pure-play online retailers require different data sources altogether. 

Amazon remains the dominant focus for most e-commerce analysis. Several specialized providers offer Amazon-specific insights, including sales estimates, pricing intelligence, and product ranking data. Numerator uses panel-based methodology with e-receipts to estimate online sales across multiple platforms. 

Profitero and Flywheel Digital have established strong reputations for comprehensive e-commerce analytics, providing not just sales data but also competitive intelligence around pricing, product assortment, and search rankings. 

Specialized Industry Coverage 

Home improvement represents a massive retail category that traditional FMCG data providers historically haven’t covered comprehensively. However, Pricing Excellence Market Insight has emerged as a specialized solution for Home Improvement (Home Depot, Lowe’s, Menards, Wayfair), Amazon, and Office Supply channels. This relatively new offering provides detailed data for categories that were previously difficult to analyze systematically. 

Epicor’s Vista Information Services focuses specifically on hardware and home improvement, using both point-of-sale data and panel methodology across a broad retailer sample. They also provide coverage for electrical distribution channels. 

For consumer durables and electronics, Open Brand offers specialized data services that complement traditional FMCG sources. 

The merger of NPD Group with Circana has created expanded industry coverage, now encompassing automotive, home improvement, technology, and numerous other sectors beyond traditional consumer packaged goods. 

Looking Forward 

The retail data landscape continues evolving rapidly, driven by changes in consumer shopping behavior and retailer technology adoption. E-commerce integration with traditional retail, the growth of direct-to-consumer brands, and expansion of alternative retail formats all present ongoing challenges and opportunities for data collection and analysis.

As outlined in SAP’s analysis of the retail data-driven future, leveraging real-time, unified insights enables brands to overcome data silos and activate information more effectively across all channels.

Staying current with data provider capabilities requires regular communication with vendors and continuous evaluation of emerging sources. The most successful market intelligence strategies combine multiple data sources to create comprehensive views of market performance across all relevant channels.

Recent work by Honeywell highlights how AI-driven data collection is already transforming retail, from demand forecasting to supply chain optimization and customer experience.

Success in today’s complex retail environment requires understanding not just what data is available, but how different sources complement each other to provide actionable market insights.