The Nielsen Homescan Consumer Panel, also called as the “mini – Canada” since it represents Canadian consumers across the US, deals in marketing information, audience measurement and business media products & services, and provides ratings and review information.
People are free to join as members and get rewarded for sharing their opinion and shopping habits with Nielsen. They can earn points by scanning the bar-codes of their purchases and transferring the data to Homescan data center. They can also take mail/paper and online surveys for more points.
Location, Registration and Eligibility
Nielsen Homescan operates in the United States, Canada, UK and Australia
Signing up is a very short and an easy process. One just need to enter some personal details like name, username, e-mail, password, country etc and complete the registration.
Once registration is completed, Nielsen Homescan places you on “Reserve Status Waiting List”, and then makes random selection of households to join the community, in order to diversify its members.
[Note : It accepts only one membership per household, and also if you are already registered, do not register again.]
If you’re selected to participate in the program, they will send you a free handheld scanner in the mail. You will use it to scan the barcodes on all of your purchases and send the information back to Nielsen Homescan, through a regular landline telephone or an internet connection.
You would need to send the data at least once a week to remain in the panel. All information collected using the device is secured and ensures participants’ privacy.
The registration is open to anybody 18+ years of age.
Survey Length & Frequency
A typical online survey takes anywhere between 5 – 25 mins to complete and are pretty much straightforward to answer. However, some high valued surveys are a little complicated & longer and can take upto 40 to 50 mins to complete.
At any point of time, one has an access to 10 – 20 surveys upon login.
Also members who actively participate, may receive up to 3 paid emails per day, while non-active members do not receive any paid emails.
Rewards, Payment Process & Minimum Payout
The surveys are either mail or paper surveys and online surveys and they are very quick & easy. One needs to use the scanner to scan/give your answers for the mail surveys.
Nielsen Homescan rewards are distributed in points. So each time you scan an item, the points are automatically added to your account.
Completing mail and online surveys also accumulate certain number of points.
The points can be redeemed for any of the merchandise from the Nielsen Homescan gift catalogue. It has a huge collections of items like household items, jewelry, electronics, toys and much more.
No mention of minimum payout.
Sweepstakes & Other Reward Opportunities:
Members can also use their points toward monthly cash sweepstakes entries.
There are a couple of opportunities for the members to earn extra rewards with Nielsen Homescan. For instance-
- They are sent yearly free gifts as a bonus, simply for engaging in the homescan process.
- They get extra points for special events like their birthdays, or for being on the panel for one
or two years etc. - Members can keep product diaries that allows them to keep track of different experiences for a period. On submitting the diary, they can receive extra points.
Quick Assessment
Pros
| Member information is secured |
| Scanning items is easy |
| Easy accumulation of extra points through surveys and diaries |
| You can quit whenever you want and return the scanner |
Cons
| May experience problems with the scanner |
| Tedious task to input every single purchase you make. |
| Time consuming and boring. |
| If you don’t submit your weekly data by the deadline, you don’t get credit even for all the data you already entered. |
| Prizes are unpopular or not useful |
| No cash rewards or gift cards. |
| Non-existence of referral program |
| No mobile app. |
