Circana
 | |
| Formerly |
|
|---|---|
| Type | Private |
| Industry | Market research |
| Founded | September 28, 1966 (as National Purchase Diary Panel Inc.) |
| Headquarters | Chicago, Illinois , U.S. |
Area served | Worldwide |
| Key people | Stuart Aitken (CEO) |
| Products | |
| Owner | Hellman & Friedman |
| Website | circana |
Circana, Inc., formerly known as Information Resources, Inc. and the NPD Group (previously National Purchase Diary Panel Inc. and NPD Research Inc.), is an American market research and technology company headquartered in Chicago.
The current name, Circana, was adopted in 2023 after the company's merger with IRI.
IRI was founded in 1979 to track principally consumers’ behavior and connect it to products those consumers bought at the supermarket.
NPD helps retailers, manufacturers, financial analysts, and the public sector measure performance, predict future performance, improve marketing and product development, and identify business and consumer trends and market opportunities. NPD tracks spending and has dedicated advisers and analysts in more than 20 industries.
Today, Circana helps clients across 26 industries with point-of-sale data tracking, panel data analysis, marketing mix modeling and assortment optimization. In terms of technology, Circana leverages a proprietary technology platform called "Liquid Data™" and its underlying data set and algorithms .
Circana is majority owned by private equity. After the 2022 NPD merger, Circana became jointly owned by Hellman & Friedman, Vestar, New Mountain Capital and company management.
Circana announced that Stuart Aitken, formerly Chief Merchant and Marketing Officer at Kroger and previously CEO of dunnhumby would become President and CEO effective January 1, 2025.