Nielsen and Alibaba launch 'New Offer Advisor'

Nielsen has teamed up with Chinese eCommerce company Alibaba to launch a solution called 'New Offer Advisor', to help online retailers analyse their eCommerce performance, identify areas of market potential, and drive product innovation.

Alibaba - generally recognised as the largest online and mobile commerce company in the world in terms of gross merchandise volume - will provide its transaction data to Nielsen, which will analyse it to produce market insights. New Offer Advisor also incorporates response data from online surveys with selected online shoppers.

The new tool offers a range of features, including:

• White Space Creator - to identify areas where unmet consumer needs are ready for development
• Performance Tracking - to evaluate sales performance through comparison with competitors' offerings
• Target Finder - to help brands better understand their consumers
• E-Content Advisor - to enable clients to improve their online channel's conversion-to-purchase rate
• Product Optimization - to evaluate product satisfaction, and
• Price Ruler - to help clients identify the optimal selling and promotional price.

Yan Xuan, President, Nielsen Greater China, comments: 'New Offer Advisor helps our clients in three ways: namely finding white space for product innovation in the online market, tracking and optimizing their operation in the competitive environment throughout the pre-launch and post-launch period, and improving the online return.'

The second phase of the New Offer Advisor roll out will see the addition of a feature called 'Sales Forecast & Plan Optimizer', helping brands forecast their product's sales volume and provide suggestions on how to optimize marketing plans and ROI.

Web sites: www.nielsen.com and www.alibaba.com .