ACNielsen Announces Category Business Planner Contract With Ahold USA.

Business Editors

SCHAUMBURG, Ill.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 14, 2002

Owner of Six US Supermarket Companies Cites

Added Efficiency of Category Management Tool

ACNielsen U.S., an operating unit of ACNielsen, a VNU company, today announced that Ahold USA has signed on to use Category Business Planner (CBP), ACNielsen's industry-leading category management intelligence system. The Web-based tool will be implemented in all U.S. supermarket companies owned by Ahold: Stop & Shop, Giant-Landover, Giant-Carlisle, BI-LO, and Tops. CBP was already being implemented at Bruno's when Ahold purchased the company late last year.

Mike Marrotte, Ahold USA vice president, Grocery, said, "Category Business Planner is a tool we will use to take category management to the next level. It will assist our operating companies and our suppliers in becoming more efficient. CBP will enable us to spend more time utilizing the logic and learnings from the data, which will help us make more informed fact-based decisions."

Category Business Planner will enable category managers at each of the Ahold companies to quickly access critical sales information from their desktops. Users will be able to read news headlines about key performance indicators and then drill down into the details by clicking on a headline. The tool will also enable manufacturers that work with Ahold to obtain information about their category's performance in each of the operating companies according to that company's unique category definitions, operating territories and competition.

Dan Sacco, senior vice president of Retail Services and Business Development for ACNielsen, said, "We are thrilled to welcome Ahold USA to the Category Business Planner family. It is extremely gratifying to see CBP's rapid acceptance in the industry. We invested a lot of time in understanding our clients' frustrations with category management and worked tirelessly to build a tool that would address those issues. Apparently, we hit the mark."

Ahold USA, which operates 1,600 stores in the U.S. under six banners joins a rapidly expanding list of CBP retailers, including Meijer, SUPERVALU, Walgreens, Hannaford Bros., CVS, Eckerd, Longs Drug Stores, and Winn-Dixie.

ACNielsen, a VNU company, is the world's leading marketing information company. Offering services in more than 100 countries, the company provides measurement and analysis of marketplace dynamics and consumer attitudes and behavior. Clients rely on ACNielsen's market research, proprietary products, analytical tools and professional service to understand competitive performance, to uncover new opportunities and to raise the profitability of their marketing and sales campaigns.

Note to Editors: Look for this press release and other ACNielsen news on the Internet at http://acnielsen.com/news. More information about Category Business Planner can be found at www.acnielsen.com/cbp.