Pulse vs Circana

Circana sells evidence of what shoppers purchased, for category decisions that have to rest on it. Its US receipt panel holds 200K static panelists. Circana is also a partner in the National Consumer Panel, a joint venture with NielsenIQ. A category manager taking a range review to a retailer, or a brand arguing for more shelf space, needs figures of that kind.

Teams whose analysts spend their days inside that data get tools built for the job. Circana's Brainwave is built to work through very large datasets at speed, and Circana runs Liquid Data and Liquid AI in a single, open platform, which suits a category analytics team that has to answer a business review's questions from receipt, scan and loyalty panel data.

Pulse runs AI-moderated interviews in which shoppers explain a choice in their own words, such as why they traded down to a smaller size, and the findings of every study stay searchable in one place for the next range review. Every quote in them traces to the shopper's transcript, so a brand manager can check a reason before carrying it into a retailer meeting. After a range change, a Pulse tracker can put the same questions to shoppers again so a change shows, and a follow-up interview study can explore what is behind it.

1. Brief the interview around a shelf decision. Write the first brief around a decision shoppers make in the aisle, whether to pick the brand's pack or a rival's, with the topics the interview should cover and the shoppers it should reach. The interview itself is then built by Pulse from the brief, with every shopper hearing questions drawn from the same guide.
2. Screen shoppers on what they buy. Describe the shoppers by what they buy, where and how often, such as households that bought the family pack twice in a quarter at a grocery chain, and write screener questions that check each of those details before anyone is interviewed. Pulse then runs fraud checks on every shopper who passes.
3. Bring in the brand's own buyers. Where the brand holds its own customer list, from a loyalty scheme or a direct-to-consumer store, upload it or share a link in the store's own emails, so the interviews reach known buyers as well as the shoppers Pulse recruits to the profile, and the two can be read side by side.
4. Hear shoppers compare notes on the family's choice. Where a purchase is settled at home by more than one person, such as which cereal a family keeps buying, hold a focus group of shoppers who each buy for a household, beside the one-to-one interviews, so the team hears them compare how the choice is made in their homes.
5. Put the findings in the category plan. For the category review, pass the findings through MCP into the Notion or Confluence pages where the category team keeps its plans, each quote still filed under its theme, so the next category plan starts from what shoppers said about the pack.

• Circana alternatives