NEW YORK, June 28, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Nielsen (NYSE: NLSN) announced today that Whole Foods Market, Inc. (NASDAQ: WFM), the leading natural and organic supermarket, has selected Nielsen as its primary U.S. analytics provider for point-of-sale data, consumer insights and industry metrics.

Nielsen is working with the company to collaboratively create a customized natural and organic product hierarchy that will provide a comprehensive view of Whole Foods Market's product categories, including ingredient level attributes. In addition to allowing the company and its supplier partners to make faster and more informed data-decisions to drive growth, the comprehensive and fully integrated hierarchical data will yield a deeper understanding of customer preferences.  With this deeper understanding of our customers, Whole Foods Market and its supplier partners will excel at new product development, cementing the grocer's position as a trend leader in quality and differentiated product assortments.

Fueled by a global view of retail performance measurement and a growing ability to measure the total consumer, Nielsen was chosen for its comprehensive understanding of Whole Foods Market's retail universe and inerrable coverage across categories, channels and marketing media.  In addition to developing the customized hierarchy, Nielsen will provide measurement and marketing analytics for all U.S. Whole Foods Market stores.

"Whole Foods Market has long been a great retail artist," said Don Clark, Whole Foods Market's global vice president of procurement, non-perishables. "This partnership allows us to better blend the art and science of food retail, helping us compete more effectively in a very dynamic environment."

"We are thrilled to be working with Whole Foods Market to bring the most comprehensive product hierarchy in the Health & Wellness space to the industry," said Rob Hill, executive vice president of Retail Services at Nielsen. "This hierarchy that will be opened up to the supplier community for the first time, is a foundation for an expanded analytics and consumer-centric engagement that we are proud to be working with Whole Foods Market and the industry on. In addition, our focus on Health & Wellness, advanced data reporting and vast suite of products and services will enable Whole Foods Market to stay on top of changing trends, emerging trends and consumer habits within the grocery space."  

About Nielsen
Nielsen Holdings plc (NYSE: NLSN) is a global performance management company that provides a comprehensive understanding of what consumers watch and buy. Nielsen's Watch segment provides media and advertising clients with Total Audience measurement services for all devices on which content — video, audio and text — is consumed. The Buy segment offers consumer packaged goods manufacturers and retailers the industry's only global view of retail performance measurement. By integrating information from its Watch and Buy segments and other data sources, Nielsen also provides its clients with analytics that help improve performance.  Nielsen, an S&P 500 company, has operations in over 100 countries, covering more than 90% of the world's population. For more information, visit www.nielsen.com. 

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SOURCE Nielsen