Pabst Brewing Company Extends Partnership with IRI to Drive Increased Market Insights and Enhanced Sales Growth

22/05/08 Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), the leading global provider of consumer, shopper, and market insights for consumer packaged goods (CPG), retail, and healthcare industries, announced today the continuation of its long-standing relationship with Pabst Brewing Company.  Under the enhanced agreement, Pabst will receive increased convenience, grocery and drug store insights provided by the industry-leading IRI AllScan Convenience Store Tracking and the census-based IRI InfoScan services.

Ranked one of the top five overall brewing companies (by beer sales volume) in 2007 by the Brewers Association, Pabst Brewing Company has been in business since 1844.  The company produces brand labels, including the award-winning Pabst Blue Ribbon, Old Milwaukee, Lone Star, Colt 45, Old Style and Schlitz Malt Liquor.

Pabst has expanded its relationship with IRI by inking a multi-year contract that enables superior market, competitive and brand performance insights for Pabst through expanded geographies and an increase in reporting frequency.

“IRI’s InfoScan and AllScan services have yielded unprecedented insights to help us better understand our products’ performance in the grocery, drug and convenience store space,” said Abbott Wolfe, Chief Sales Officer, Pabst Brewing Company.  “We value IRI’s commitment, service quality and experience in the beverage alcohol industry.  Our continued partnership with IRI will provide us with superior data to generate a better overall strategy for expanding our market reach and optimizing our sales growth.”

IRI InfoScan is the industry’s foremost census-based scanner tracking service, providing Pabst with high quality data and insights to fuel more effective business analyses and decision support processes at retail. The services leverage data from more than 44,000 stores on a weekly basis across the grocery, drug, mass merchandiser and convenience channels to deliver best-in-class market intelligence from which Pabst can drive its business.

IRI’s new AllScan Convenience Store Tracking service is the first 100% scan-based  point-of-sale data tracking solution for the convenience channel.  The recently launched service will supply Pabst with comprehensive, highly-accurate price, promotion, and distribution information and consumer insights across the entire convenience store channel.  Leveraging data from more than 11,000 sample stores, the service’s balanced information from census-based convenience chains, sample-based convenience chains, as well as small chain and independent convenience stores, provides markedly improved information quality over audit-based services. IRI AllScan’s weekly data reporting for convenience outlets across all available categories will help Pabst further refine its approach to the convenience retailing market.

“Pabst recognizes that an uncertain economy and heightened competition means they must track and respond to consumer purchasing patterns more aggressively than ever,” said Bump Williams, general manager, IRI Beer, Wine and Spirits Practice. “The InfoScan and AllScan tracking services offer the most powerful ‘one-two punch’ available by providing comprehensive, high-quality information on today’s traditional retail and convenience market sectors.”