Nielsen, New York, and Headset, Seattle, Wash., formed a U.S.-specific strategic alliance to deliver a read into the U.S. legal cannabis market for consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies. This move comes as Nielsen steadily develops a full suite of cannabis measurement capabilities, inclusive of strategic partnerships and beyond, to help CPG companies monitor the evolution of the legal cannabis space, and the potential impact of legal cannabis sales to better mitigate threats and identify future opportunities.
This alliance leverages the combined power of Nielsen’s consumer research capabilities with Headset’s real-time retail point-of-sale (POS) data for legal cannabis products in key legal/recreational use states, along with Headset’s proprietary product catalog, dictionary, demographic and purchase dynamics. This relationship will bring visibility into market-leading trends, highlighting segments, brands and products that are resonating with consumers in the legal cannabis market. This alliance will also give insight into consumer attitudes, product preferences, use occasions and future intent tied to consumer interaction points within CPG categories. Collectively, this suite of information will enable U.S. CPG manufacturers to more easily measure and predict the impact of cannabis on the CPG industry and strategize accordingly. The formation of this alliance dovetails Nielsen’s recent acquisition of Cannabiz Consumer Group, a Palatine, Ill.-based consumer insight group that specializes in studying the impact of marijuana legalization on CPG consumer spending and shopping behavior trends.
“Nielsen has a history of providing leading-edge analytic services for emerging categories and industries, and we are taking a similar approach with the introduction of our comprehensive suite of cannabis-related insight services,” says Jeanne Danubio, president of Nielsen, North America. “This is a noteworthy time to enter the legal cannabis measurement space. We strongly believe that Headset is the right partner to complement our services, as we commence in our commitment to provide a complete view into the important legal U.S. cannabis market for our CPG clients. We look forward to enabling their ability to measure, predict and activate against well informed, cannabis insights.”
"Embarking on a strategic alliance with Nielsen, the world's leading market intelligence company, is great validation for not only the work done at Headset, but [also] for the cannabis industry overall," says Cy Scott, chief executive officer of Headset. "By combining Nielsen's level of expertise on analytics services with the Headset platform, we can better support the first-of-its-kind cannabis industry developing within the U.S."
The first output of the Nielsen and Headset relationship will be “The U.S. Cannabis Market Pulse Report,” an industry report that will provide a thorough overview of the legal recreational cannabis space from its infancy through 2018, including key market dynamics, cannabis-interested consumer perceptions and motivations and insights into cannabis purchase dynamics and tendencies relative to CPG categories. Additionally, Nielsen and Headset will be developing a full suite of capabilities for the Canadian market.
