VusionGroup has secured a significant stake in Yagora, a provider of shopper insights for category management and shopper activation via retail media that is highly relevant to the consumer goods industry. Until September 2020, Yagora appeared as GPS Dataservice and made a name for itself in the industry with top customers such as dm Drogeriemarkt, Ferrero, Radeberger Gruppe and Kellogg’s through reliable data analysis for product range decisions.
Within the VusionGroup, data specialist Yagora, led by founder and CEO Gerd Palmer, now works closely with ‘In the Memory’ (Memory for short), the category management and shelf optimisation platform that counts well-known retail companies such as Carrefour and Intermarché among its customers, particularly in France. The VusionGroup (formerly SES Imagotag) acquired Memory in January 2023. Through further acquisitions, it aims to provide brick-and-mortar retailers worldwide with a technological platform that enables them to catch up with online retailers in terms of data-driven optimisation.
Yagora brings around 50 employees to the VusionGroup, who can provide retailers and brand manufacturers with precise, quickly implementable and highly networked insights for optimising category management, shopper activation and promotional performance. Yagora is also relevant for the VusionGroup in terms of further expanding its market presence in the German-speaking countries, where the shopper experts are particularly strong. VusionGroup also wants to tap into the branded goods industry.
Data and insights come together
Yagora will complement VusionGroup’s platform, which brings together retail data from IoT shelf systems, sensors, computer vision and retail media platforms, with shopper behaviour analysis, POS analytics and evidence-based impact assessment. This will give retailers and manufacturers a comprehensive understanding of shopper behaviour at the shelf and enable them to make strategic decisions – from assortment and pricing to campaign management – based on a broader data set.
“Together, we will develop a new generation of data-driven services that are optimally tailored to changing market needs. Their expertise in shopper behaviour analysis and shopper activation is a perfect complement to our data strategy,” says Jérôme Hamrit, SEVP of Data & Retail Media at VusionGroup.
dm analyses with Yagora
Yagora was founded in 1997 as GPS Dataservices and has developed into a leading provider of shopper-based research and data analytics in brick-and-mortar retail. The company combines surveys, POS behaviour observation, behavioural data and modelling approaches to understand how consumers make decisions at the shelf and which measures lead to demonstrable sales and conversion effects. A particular focus is on translating insights into recommendations for category management, pricing and promotion strategies as well as in-store communication.
Since 2024, Yagora has been working with dm Drogeriemarkt in controlled store tests and POS research for industry partners. The tests, in which industry products can be tested under real conditions in dm stores, are conducted and evaluated by Yagora.
Development of new data models
The merger of Yagora and the VusionGroup gives both partners the opportunity to combine shopper-centric analytics with in-store data from the VusionGroup and develop new data models that are designed to support category decisions, activation strategies and retail media measures in an even more targeted manner.
