The NPD Group has been building, operating and maintaining consumer panels for more than 35 years – first using paper questionnaires, paper diaries and in-home scanners and in 1999, moving online. Today, NPD's online consumer panel is considered our industry's most responsive. The panel comprises more than 2.5 million registered members, 600,000 of whom are considered our "core sample" of active panelists. These consumer panelists complete our online surveys and help us tell our clients about who is buying what, where and why. NPD collects and processes over 7.5 million surveys a year, which we consider a testament to our leadership in understanding and analyzing consumer behavior.

NPD's online panel: how does it work?
Most of the consumer information we compile in the United States comes from regularly scheduled surveys sent to online panelists who report on their recent purchases. Each week, more than 160,000 individual panelists are selected to participate in one of our weekly studies. These consumer panelists record specific details about those purchases. The responding sample is balanced and weighted to be demographically representative of the total adult (ages 18+) and total teen (ages 13-17) U.S. populations. NPD expertise in sampling and weighting techniques ensures that return samples are representative of U.S. Census demographics. Today's Internet users represent all regional, educational, income level and other population segments. We are confident that we're getting an accurate read on the total population.

How do we build our online consumer panel?
We rely on multiple sources to help us build our online panel and have a consistent success rate with acquiring new members through our NPD Online Research Web site (www.npdor.com). Many consumer panelists complete surveys because they like the idea of having their voices heard; other panelists join because they are drawn to our incentive program, which offers them chances to win sweepstakes prizes. As NPD Chief Research Officer Steve Coffey says, "we cast a very wide net with a variety of techniques, aiming to eliminate the biases associated with specific methods for acquiring panelists." This ensures we have the most robust and representative panel available.

All prospective panelists are invited to register to participate in surveys on the NPD Online Research Web site. There, they choose a member name and password and complete a member profile survey.

Those who complete the registration process are added to our pool of active panelists and can be selected for tracking surveys that monitor trends, custom surveys designed for specific NPD clients or divisions, panel surveys and polls. The consumer information we generate based on our panelists' survey responses helps us tell the story of who's buying what, how often, where they're buying, for whom and why, providing a clear view of consumers' buying behavior and related trends. The consumer buying behavior trend information we collect complements the point-of -sale (POS) data we compile from our retail partners.

Find out more
More than 1,300 NPD clients, many in the Fortune 500, who represent a range of industries, rely on information derived from our online consumer panel to better understand their customers, product categories distribution channels and competition.