Featured Reports

New From NPD

Market Level Information
Would you like to know the ideal markets with the best opportunity to grow your share and improve sales and distribution — while boosting your profits? NPD introduces market level capabilities: local market research information for manufacturers and retailers. MORE

Coming Soon - European Athletic Footwear Report for the U.S. Financial Community.
Monitor the athletic footwear industry’s performance in five major European countries and the U.S. Compare brands and styles by category across countries using our new point-of-sale tracking data for European athletic footwear. MORE

Market Views Introductory Report for the prestige beauty industry gives manufacturers their first look at the next generation of point-of-sale (POS) tracking. For the first time, gain access to five new distribution measures, along with regional views of distribution and sales. MORE

Food & Beverage Buzz Monitor.
This bimonthly service goes straight to consumers to reveal their concerns, needs, and wants. Now you can track the established and emerging trends that can make a real difference to your bottom line. MORE

NPD's Connected Home Theater report provides critical insights to companies vying for a position in the evolving home entertainment market. It examines awareness, interest, and adoption of digital content via home networks and broadband. This landmark study can help shape convergence strategies by leveraging NPD's unique sales information, an extensive consumer survey, and analyst perspective. MORE

Insights Mission

NPD Insights® is a newsletter of The NPD Group, Inc. NPD Insights presents vital information on key market trends and features the NPD services, which help our clients understand, anticipate and capitalize on these trends to build their businesses.
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INFORMATION & INSIGHTS

Back-to-School Not Over Yet

Isabelle Grenet
Marshal Cohen

Waiting until Labor Day (or later) used to leave back-to-school shoppers rummaging through racks of picked-over, randomly-sized merchandise. Not this year. This season, millions of kids headed back to school in their summer clothes, maybe with a few new staple items.

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INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT

Wake-Up Call for School Foodservice Providers

NPD data shows today’s college students are much more restaurant- savvy, have high expectations, and are barely satisfied with their overall dining experiences at campus cafeterias. And while restaurants at schools and universities perform well, huge opportunity exists for on-campus dining services to improve their customer satisfaction.

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Consumer perspective

Consumer Awareness of
High-Def Video Players


Source: The NPD Group/
High-Definition Video Players

Only about 40% of consumers state that they are aware of high-def video player formats like Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Among those, only half claim to be at least "somewhat familiar." When queried if they would buy HD video players, many stated the price/value is not there yet, and they are content using their standard DVD player.

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International Corner

The British Nursery Market

According to the latest government statistics, more women in Great Britain are choosing to have babies now than at any other time since 1980. Demographic trends such as parents getting older (and more financially independent before having children) and grandparents living longer means more money is being spent on each newborn child than in previous generations. This, coupled with the increasing divorce rate, which results in duplicate purchasing of the same products across two households, has resulted in retailers having a growing appetite for all things baby-related.

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Industry news

"Boometrics" Study Sees Billion Dollar Market Potential for Music Sellers
New consumer survey conducted by The NPD Group for NARM and AARP shows that baby boomers now account for one-third of all CD sales in the U.S.
More than 70 percent of the 76 million baby boomers in the U.S. report buying music in the past year, making it the most important buying segment for CDs and an increasingly important market for digital downloads, according to a new study.
View Article Experts Debate the Future of Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD Player Hardware at the DisplaySearch 5th Annual HDTV Conference

DisplaySearch, the worldwide leader in display market research and consulting, will host a panel session covering "Next Gen DVD Hardware Outlook" at its upcoming 2007 HDTV Conference, to be held October 10-11, 2007, at the Hilton Universal City in Los Angeles, California.

View Article The NPD Group Reports Foodservice Growth At Retail Stores Outpacing Restaurants
Over the past two years, the foodservice operations at retail outlets (such as convenience stores, supermarkets, discount stores, and price clubs) have posted stronger foodservice traffic growth than any other segment of the restaurant industry.
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NPD In the news

Dangerous buys for boys
Chicago Tribune

"We're seeing the younger getting older earlier," said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst with market-research company The NPD Group Inc. "The guys are shopping at the kids' Abercrombie and they can't wait until they can fit into the real Abercrombie stuff."

SpongeBob Pushes Deeper Into Electronics Aisle
NY Times

According to NPD’s most recent study of children and consumer electronics trends, the average age that children begin using consumer electronics devices declined from 8.1 years in 2005 to 6.7 years in 2007.

NOT JUST FOR WOMEN: Diet firms weighing in with males
Chicago Tribune

During the low-carb craze, the diet industry realized that men also diet, said Harry Balzer of The NPD Group, a market-research firm. "It's not a trend in dieting. Men have always dieted, but low carb opened up the possibility that men would pay for a specialized diet," Balzer said. At any point in time, according to Balzer, one in five men is on a diet.