Case for Critical Analysis: “Nielsen Media Research'

ACNielsen Corporation is a global marketing and advertising research company headquartered in New York, NY. Nielsen is active in over one hundred countries, and has a workforce of 36,000 people worldwide. Total revenues amounted to $4.8 billion in 2009. David Calhoun left General Electric to step into the position of CEO at the ACNielsen Corporation (Colvin 2010). His challenge: The media research unit, which is under heavy fire from television clients NBC and CBS for chronic delays in reporting television ratings. The problems lie at all levels of the organization. They don’t have a system that is sufficient enough to collect all the data necessary to deliver the ratings efficiently and effectively to the customer. Nielsen’s most recent actions do not align with the goals and plans of the company set forth when they first began in 1923. Nielsen Company’s mission is to provide clients a precise understanding of the consumer is the key to making the right decisions -decisions that can lead to profitable growth- always innovating to keep pace with emerging market trends and the increasingly diverse, demanding and connected consumer. Nielsen can only take action steps to attain their strategic, tactical, and operational goals if it successfully aligns its organizational activities and allocate their resources to meet clients’ needs and achieve their mission. Innovation is necessary in order to compete with cable and satellite companies that are working on a way to get set-top boxes to provide real-time TV viewing data to rival