NIELSEN LOSES MONOPOLY
By Adnews Staff
A.C. Nielsen Canada Ltd. was dealt a blow last week by the federal Competition Tribunal. The quasi-judicial body ruled that the research firm could no longer impose contracts on retailers forcing them to turn over data from electronic price scanners only to Nielsen. Nor will Nielsen be able to enter into long-term contracts committing companies to buy market research services from Nielsen - specifically, analysis of the data which is read into scanners at checkout counters from bar codes on packages. This information is used by both manufacturers and retailers to make decisions about products. Retailers use it to decide what products to stock, where to place them in the stores and what prices to sell them at. Companies will now be able to terminate a contract with Nielsen with eight months notice. The move breaks Nielsen's monopoly on the $70-million-a-year market for scanner data and lets in Chicago-based Information Resources Inc. Nielsen, a division of New York-based Dun & Bradstreet Corp., is in hot competition with Information Resources in the U.S. When the latter tried to break into Canada, it found it was blocked because Nielsen had sewed up the market through exclusive deals with retailers. Information Resources complained to federal authorities and this led to Nielsen being called before a tribunal in 1994 to answer to charges of anti-competitive acts. The Bureau of Competition Policy says exclusive contracts with retailers prevents other companies from gaining access to the raw scanner data and competing with Nielsen. In addition, the Tribunal said it may order Nielsen to supply all its historical scanner data to competitors such as Information Resources, if the data is unavailable from retailers. The federal body is holding hearings on the matter later this month.