Both Nielsen and IRI construct retail geographies in consultation with individual retailers. Nielsen calls these geographic areas Trading Areas (TAs). IRI calls them Retailer Marketing Areas (RMAs).
A TA/RMA is constructed by county. A TA/RMA can cross state borders.
In many cases, Nielsen and IRI will offer multiple TA/RMA options for a particular chain. For example, you can look at Stop & Shop New England, Stop & Shop New York, or Total Stop & Shop.
Each TA/RMA also has a “remaining market” which represents their competition in that geographic region. This remaining market is important for benchmarking.
To create the remaining market for a retailer, IRI and Nielsen include all competitive stores physically located within the boundaries of that retailer’s RMA/TA. Nielsen calls the retailer’s competitive market the ROM (short for “Rest of Market”). IRI calls it the CRMA (short for “Competitive Retailer Market Area”).
Hello Sally,
Would you please define “competitive stores” in the context of CRMA? Are these stores that sell similar brand names, item types, categories? I’m still having some trouble wrapping my mind around the difference between TA/RMA vs. ROM/CRMA. Thanks!
“Competitive stores” means stores that compete in a specific geographic area, regardless of who sells what products. TAs and RMAs are defined by each retailer and are totally based on which counties each retailer wants to include in their TAs/RMAs. They have nothing to do with which products sell where. So…
Nielsen’s ROM (Rest of Market) means all the stores in the Trading Area EXCEPT the ones that belong to the retailer defining the TA. IRI’s CRMA (Competitive Retailer Marketing Area) includes ALL stores in the RMA (Retailer Marketing Area) including the ones belonging to the retailer defining the RMA.
Hope that helps!
Regarding CRMA and ROM, which would you use to calculate a retailer’s opp. gap? In many examples you use ROM and CRMA interchangeably; however, a retailer’s ROM does not include the retailer that is defining the market. One instance where this was confusing: would a correct calculation for the retailer’s share of the category be RMA dollar sales/CRMA dollar sales for that category? From there, would a correct calculation for the retailer’s share of market be RMA ACV($MM)/CRMA ACV ($MM)? This is all based on using IRI data.
I will avoid using any particular vendor’s market or measure terms in this answer! I will make it as conceptually clear as I can and then leave it up to you to execute given what you purchase from your vendor.
Opportunity Gap = retailer’s share of the category vs. retailer’s share of total market sales
Retailer’s share of category = category dollar sales for retailer / (category dollar sales for retailer + category dollar sales for rest of trading area)
Retailer’s share of total market sales = retailer $ACV / (retailer $ACV + rest of trading area $ACV)
Some databases have a single number available for retailer + rest of trading area. Some databases don’t so you need to add up retailer + rest of trading area manually.
Here is a post on opportunity gap analysis for step by step details.
I’m looking at syndicated data, why do some stores have TA and xAOC Rem at the end of the store name. What is the store measuring?
In Nielsen data, if a market ends in “TA” that means Trading Area and is for that retailer only. If it ends in “Rem,” it means Remaining Market, so is everybody else besides that retailer in that Retailer’s trading area. Hope that helps!
Does anyone have a good definition of SRMA?
Neither Robin nor I are familiar with that term. If you can provide more context as to where you saw the term, we might be able to hazard a guess.
According to IRI’s All Geographies Release List, SRMA = Sample-based Retail Marketing Area. Hope that helps!
Thanks for the info, Rachael!
Wanted to update now that I have a better understanding: A sample-based SRMA is where the retailer only provides data for a sample of stores in the chain vs all stores in the chain. The criteria for sample store selection should be from a mix of store sizes, county sizes, geographically dispersed, and ethnically diverse. Census-based RMA’s include all stores within the chain.
Thanks Rachel!
What is the difference between RTA and CTA in Nielsen? I know CTA is the Census Trade Area, but recently I came across the team RTA and assumed that it could be a Retailer Trade Area.
Your inputs will be valuable.
I haven’t seen the term RTA appear in my Nielsen datasets so I’m not sure. I suppose it could indicate that the retail data in question is from a sample of stores (and that is why it’s not labeled as a CTA). But it also could just be a more general term for a trading area. Sorry not to be more definitive!
Hi Sally,
Many thanks for the wonderful blog.
Does IRI give Store wise sales information in their RMA or will it be an aggregration of all stores in the RMA ?
Thank you for your time and help
Geographies available in a regular database is an aggregation of stores, in IRI or Nielsen. An RMA could be a corporate total or a banner, which is a chain in a specific market. Individual store-level data can usually be purchased separately from the data supplier.
Thank you so much !
What is DIV in IRI geographies? What is included?
DIV is part of geography names for specific retailers (as opposed to markets) and stands for “division.” They are based on however that retailer defines their divisions and include specific counties. You should be able to get definitions and/or maps of what is included in these geographies from Circana (new name for IRI).