Home > Careers > Summer Associate Program Summer Associate Program The Opportunity Our Summer Associate Program is designed to give participants an opportunity to broaden their knowledge and develop a solid foundation in the field of market research through a variety of disciplines: consumer research, custom research, quantitative analysis, strategy, and broader market insights. A brief description of each of our business units is described below: Client Development / Retail Business Group With touch points across all the industries NPD tracks, the Americas Commercial Group is responsible for our clients’ engagement and relationship with our products. We keep client satisfaction levels high to maintain and grow a strong revenue stream for our company. Our priority is staying closely connected with our clients. We listen to them to make sure we understand and respond to their needs, keeping abreast of what’s happening in the market and providing relevant insights to help them make effective business decisions. Our team works with manufacturer and retailer clients. Our services combine deep insight into purchase dynamics, forward-looking analytics, and high-impact recommendations to give clients confidence that their sales and marketing decisions will drive growth. Analytics Checkout delivers the most comprehensive view of consumer purchase behavior for general merchandise categories. With more than 50 years in tracking sales and market share in general merchandise and foodservice industries, our researchers have developed expertise in classifying your complex product sets. We benchmark our consumer panel with sales data and methodologies widely accepted as the industry standard. The Analytics team works with manufacturer and retailer clients, combining deep insight into purchase dynamics, forward-looking analytics, and high-impact recommendations to give clients confidence that their decisions will drive growth. Global Product Management The Product group ensures our products remain relevant as the marketplace evolves, and that we develop new products that drive incremental revenue for NPD. In Product Development, it’s all about accelerating our growth, hitting our financial targets, collaborating with colleagues and clients, and creating valuable products that help companies work smarter, so they can grow. The Product Management team has a continuous-improvement mindset. We make sure we’re leading in terms of improving our processes and finding the most efficient way to work. Checkout delivers the most comprehensive view of consumer purchase behavior for general merchandise categories to help our clients understand how to adjust marketing to fuel growth. Research Science There are three phases in the data lifecycle at NPD: data collection, ensuring data representativeness, and insight generation. The Research Science group owns the data representativeness phase, meaning that our information is projectable and accurately represents the consumer populations about which we want to say something. We connect with both ends of the NPD data lifecycle to ensure all the data mechanics are correct and we are getting what we need. Data may also need to be calibrated, projected, or imputed. We also perform a variety of data quality checks. Completing all of these tasks ensures the NPD practice areas that create and manage the products get what they need to do their jobs. Global Technology The Information Technology (IT) team makes the data collection, transformation, and delivery processes possible across the organization. We process and analyze consumer and point-of-sale data, applying dictionary matching, machine learning, suppression, calibration, projection, and other rules to produce the data sets. We also develop and maintain software to access, manipulate, and present our data to clients. We are responsible for the equipment, infrastructure, and networking that delivers our data (both internally and externally) and for IT security and disaster recovery. Operations The Operations team is the primary issues clearinghouse for our clients. Anything related to data issues comes to us, including data inquiries, real or perceived data errors, and questions on methodology elements (e.g., suppression). We also serve as an educational resource, explaining the ins and outs of point-of-sale (POS) data processes. This centralized approach to managing client issues and inquiries puts our clients where they should be – at the center of our business. Corporate Functions A Strong team of corporate professionals is behind our insights and solutions. Finance, Marketing, Human Resources, Legal, and Administrative Support – there is a wide range of opportunities. Apply Now About Us Products Industries News © 2021 NPD Group Terms of Use Do Not Sell My Personal Information Cookie Settings Privacy Notices