Homescan Profiles

Homescan® Profiles provides postal code level insight into which consumer packaged goods (CPG) are Canadians more likely to buy and how much did they spend. These profiles are derived from two years of data from Nielsen's Homescan® Shopper Panel. The panel tracks more than 12,000 households per year that log the UPC codes of the products they purchase. The product library offers detailed variables by: Aisle (ASL), Aisle by Category (ABC), Brand (BRA), and Brand by Aisle by Category (BAC).

These variables can be used with PRIZM®, Canada’s premier segmentation system, to profile Canadians with similar CPG spending behaviours. Homescan® Profiles are available as flat files or on the ENVISION platform. ENVISION allows you to run Homescan® Profiles along with your other licensed Environics Analytics datasets to perform quick analysis, or generate marketing reports, all in a secured environment. Homescan® Profiles is available at all levels of geography down to the postal code level in Canada, excluding the territories.

The Homescan® Profiles library and variable descriptions have been modified to make it easier to navigate to the variables of interest while preserving the hierarchical integrity of Nielsen’s category definitions. A supplemental lookup is included with a deconstructed view of the variable and metadata list. The new library also uses category terminology that is more aligned with CPG and Media clients.

As a result of a change in the source data from Nielsen, brand-related variable IDs (Brand and Brand by Aisle by Category) have changed for the 2022 vintage of Homescan Profiles. A walkover document has been created to assist with working with these new variable IDs.

Below are some additional resources linked for your reference: release notes, variables list, and metadata.

Additional Resources

Homescan Profiles - Release Notes
Homescan Profiles - Variables List
Homescan Profiles - Variables List (Excel)
Homescan Profiles - Metadata

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