Type Private Founded 1979 CEO Andrew Appel (Jun 2012–) Number of employees 3,600 CFO Mike Samuels | Industry Market Research Website www.iriworldwide.com Owner New Mountain Capital Chief information officer Ash M. Patel General counsel Susan Bennett | |
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Key people Andrew Appel, President and Chief Executive Officer Headquarters Chicago, Illinois, United States Profiles | ||
IRI is an American market research company which provides clients with consumer, shopper, and retail market intelligence and analysis focused on the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry. IRI’s clients include 95 percent of the Fortune Global 500 CPG, retail and healthcare companies. The firm operates in 58 countries through stand-alone operations, wholly owned subsidiaries, partnerships and alliances.
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History
IRI was formed Information Resources, Inc. ("IRI") in Chicago in 1979 with the introduction of the BehaviorScan service, a testing service that quantifies the ROI of a new TV advertising program. IRI became a public company in 1983. By 1993 Fortune Magazine had named IRI a "company to watch" for expanding into two of its biggest markets: analyzing nationwide scanner data on consumer products and producing computer software. At that time slightly more than half IRI's revenues came from Infoscan, its marketing data service. Shortly thereafter in 1995, IRI rolled out its ScanKey panel service, in which consumers nationwide could scan the barcode of their CPG product purchases at home to enable purchase tracking by various household demographics. In late 2003, IRI was acquired by Symphony Technology Group, run by Dr. Romesh Wadhwani. The new leadership led to a focus on IRI's predictive analytic applications.
In April 2013, SymphonyIRI Group, Inc. announced that it is rebranding as IRI.
In September 2013, IRI acquired Aztec, a provider of market measurement and related services for consumer packaged goods (CPG), liquor and pharmaceutical manufacturers and retailers in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden and the United Kingdom. This was the largest acquisition in IRI’s history and significantly expanded IRI’s geographic presence.