Research organizations around the world obtain information about consumer behavior and market trends from customer panels. These panels scan products they bought and send the data to a database.

Opticon has several products available providing a simple solution:

• Simple data input
• Easy data storage
• Transferring information

Market research is the process of systematic gathering, recording and analyzing data about customers, competitors and the market. In order to optimize productivity and the information flow, Opticon developed scanners for three global research organizations; GfK, TNS and IRI.

The process
Market researchers equip their consumer panels with a scanner in order to obtain consumer behavior in a user-friendly and easy to implement way. With these data, marketeers are provided with valuable insight into consumer key shopping behavior. This helps in understanding purchase behavior and shopping patterns for any segment of the population.

Barcode Scanning at home
When the grocery products are bought, consumer panels can simply take the barcode scanner and scan the barcodes on the products. After scanning the products, the scanner can simply be plugged in a cradle or cable, supplied with the scanner. Then the application can be started, which will transfer all of the scanned barcodes from the scanner to the research organizations.

For GfK, Opticon developed a special keyboard layout and introduced the OPL-9725. This solution worked out perfectly for the ConsumerScan application of GfK. Because of the positive experiences of GfK, TNS showed interest as well. The organization decided to start using the OPL-9725, the OPN-2001 and the OPH-1003 (now OPH-1005), which turned out to be very successful.

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