If you’ve worked with CPG data for a while, you probably know that incremental volume estimates can fluctuate and look a little funky (especially in weeks with little or no trade promotion). I wrote a post about this phenomena a few weeks ago. As I stated then, usually these fluctuations are small relative to total volume […]
Picture This: Bar Chart, The Go-To Graph
The bar chart is probably the most commonly used type of graph and this post talks about what kind of data this works well for. In this post I’ll talk about using bar charts to compare various products and geographies but for one fact and one time period. This is part of a series of […]
Picture This: Famous Movie Quotes!
Here’s something fun that I came across this week, as movies were in the news due to the announcement of Oscar nominations: Click here to see Famous Movie Quotes as Charts, from the website Flowingdata.com (January 16, 2014). Note the wide variety of graph types used! This shows that you don’t have to have numerical data […]
Picture This: Stacked Bar Chart, Cousin of the Pie Chart
As mentioned in a previous post, how you present your analysis is at least as important as the numbers themselves. Using the right graphs is an essential element that helps you tell a story with your data, rather than just report a bunch of numbers. In this older post I talked about market share and […]
For Aspiring CPG Data Gurus: Incremental Volume Unveiled
If you are a CPG company with significant trade promotion spending, you probably already buy IRI/Nielsen data or are seriously considering it. Both IRI and Nielsen measure Incremental Volume: how much extra volume you sold due to trade merchandising. If you’re not sure what incremental volume is, read this first. If you’ve already got the […]
3 Important Facts About Incremental Volume
Trade promotion evaluation is a big selling point for Nielsen and IRI data. Both vendors provide a key piece of the promotion evaluation puzzle: estimates of Incremental Volume. Incremental Volume tells you how much extra volume you sold due to trade merchandising. Here are a few things you should know about this important but sometimes […]


