Scanner data for liquor outlets now available
Promotion Information Bureau, Inc. (PIB) has introduced LiquorScan, anew marketing service for spirit, wine, and beer companies that utilizes the growing number of electronic scanners at check-out counters. PIB is a single-source marketing data company dedicated to the domestic spirits, beer, and wine industry. LiquorScan will provide analysis on a monthly basis of checkout counter scanner-sourced data transmitted from 600 retail liquor, food and drug store outlets in 12 major markets. Market coverage will be expanded in the near future. Consumer sales data will be transmitted to PIB by stores and will track unit and dollar shares, sales, and prices by SKU of all brands carried. PIB will analyze the data and provide each subscriber with a market by market, as well as national, report on the subscriber's own brand and those of all competitors. Reports will be furnished in print, disk, or electronic transmission.
StatPac update follows user suggestions
StatPac Inc. has released a new version of StatPac Gold IV, its survey and marketing research software. Version 4.3 adds a variety of user-requested features to the package. Many of the enhancements focus on improving report formats. New capabilities include the addition of footnotes, page numbering, a table of contents, switching to the landscape mode, and improved labeling in banner tables. Other enhancements concentrate on functionality, such as adding new analysis options, new commands to the programming language, and a more powerful report generator. The company also unveiled a new CRT interviewing module for disk-based surveys and other applications where the respondent enters his or her answers directly into the computer.
Census reports available on demographic trends
Urban Decision Systems, Inc. has released six new reports based upon the new 1990 census data. Combined with UDS's estimates and projections, this now gives businesses the opportunity to analyze demographic trends over a 27-year period. The new reports are: Demographic Trends (1970-1980-1990), Income Trends (1970-1980-1990), Demographic Trends (1980-1990-1992), Income Trends (1980-1990-1992), Demographic Trends (1990-1992-1997) and Income Trends (1990-1992-1997).
Software captures answers in respondents' voices
Creative Research Systems, publishers of The Survey System, a PC survey analysis package, have created a microcomputer-based voice capture interviewing package for survey research. Researchers using either telephone or in-person interviews can now record answers to selected questions in the respondents' own voices. The Survey System combines voice capture questions with the usual multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank typed questions to make a complete interview. The Survey System can then combine both voice and typed answers to make a complete interview.
The Survey System can use demographic and other classifying questions to sort the voice captured answers during playback. Answers to a question about a consumer product could be sorted by sex, age, product usage and purchase intent. While hearing a comment, a researcher could see that the comment was made by a woman, 25-34 years old, who has young children and uses the product weekly. The same comments can be resorted in different ways as often as the user likes.
The user can assign numeric codes to the comments in order to group similar answers together during playback or to quantify the numbers of answers mentioning particular topics.
Free white paper examines micro-geography
The changes in "micro-geography" and their significance to marketers and planners are explained by Claritas/ NPDC in a new 20-page white paper. Titled DataBridge '92: The New Marketing Geography, it discusses the following topics:
- first-time availability of extensive demographic data for all census blocks in the U.S.
- 1980 to 1990 boundary-definition changes and their impact on marketing applications
- detailed, electronic street mapping capabilities from "TIGER"
- finer breaks in home-value and income data
- census vs. postal geography, and converting census demographics to postal geography
- how demographic data is updated between decennial censuses
The white paper is free and can be obtained by calling Claritas/NPDC at 800-284-4868.
New version of Axum increases graphics capabilities
TriMetrix, Inc. has released version 2.0 of Axum, a technical graphics and data analysis package for PCs. The newest version of Axum allows users to automate repetitive graphing and data analysis tasks with batch processing capabilities. These batch programs can be written automatically by Axum and can be used to control Axum from other programs. In addition, Axum 2.0 offers all-new automatic axes scaling and intelligent tick placement methods that allow users to create publication-quality graphs.
Axum 2.0 offers major advances in 3D, 2D, and contour plotting. Users can now use unlimited-sized data sets to produce 3D mesh surfaces, which can be filled with varying colors. Stacked 3D contours can be created for both gridded or irregularly spaced data. Enhanced 2D graphing capabilities include additional curve fitting plot types and labeled scatter plots. Users can also choose from PostScript fonts in addition to the 22 built-in fonts when annotating their graph. New supported graphics export file types include TIFF, Color PostScript, and HPGL2.
The program's data editor now lets users sort multiple columns of data of any size. In addition, users can perform operations on blocks as well as columns and rows. A function evaluation menu has been added, allowing users to evaluate arbitrary functions. The new version automatically uses EMS, XMS, and the high memory area and requires less memory to run (420K).
Forms processing package reads boxes, text
A new forms processing software package, ALEX-FORM, has been in-troduced by A.L. Systems, a London-based software company. The program processes check boxes at 150 per second and will automatically OCR any clearly printed or typewritten text on the form at 360 words per minute. Handwriting cannot be accurately OCR'd. ALEX-FORM displays the words on the screen in the relevant location. It ensures that the data goes in the corresponding field. The operator just has to transcribe the handwritten characters correctly. If a handwritten box is empty, the program detects this and skips over it.
Version 1.2 of EZREPORT
Raosoft EZREPORT version 1.2 is a DOS-based report writer that lets users produce custom reports from any dBASE-type database. It will run on single or multiple floppy or hard disk drives and needs 512K memory, DOS 2.0 or higher. It is networkable and can run under the Windows environment. There is no limit to the database size that it can work with except system capacity. The software features an intuitive command structure, which is characterized by its reduced command set in straightforward English words. EZREPORT will support all types of periodic report preparation. It will provide additional capacity to users of Raosoft SURVEY, version 2.0, such as allowing for comparison of survey results over different time periods.