Features

Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) and comScore Networks have established a partnership to make two extraordinary online data resources available to the academic community. comScore captures the complete online behavior of a panel of 1.5 million worldwide Internet users, not only including Web-wide surfing activity, but also complete details of actual purchase transactions across virtually every e-commerce site.

WRDS provides a web-based interface for instantly accessing and extracting data from leading business-oriented databases using a desktop PC. Currently licensed by over 75 of the world's top business schools, WRDS provides approximately 1.5 terabytes of research data from a wide range of providers.

The comScore/WRDS partnership includes two key datasets that collectively support a wide range of research and teaching requirements.

First there is netScore, a commercially available audience measurement database that reports activity of the top 10,000 Web sites, from a total worldwide level down to 78 local U.S. markets. It includes dozens of aggregate measures describing visitor trends, site usage intensity and demographic breakdowns. It is delivered via an easy-to-use Web-based reporting tool, and is updated on a weekly basis.

Additionally, WRDS will have comScore data available at the user session level. This dataset will include individual-level surfing and purchasing activity for about 100,000 comScore panelists over a six-month period across all Web sites. It will provide useful details about each browsing session as well as in-depth information about every online purchase transaction made by each panelist.

For more information about accessing these databases if your school is a WRDS subscriber, or details about how to become one if you aren't, please go to http://wrds.wharton.upenn.edu/demo/comscore/index.shtml.

Peter Fader, Professor of Marketing
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
749 Huntsman Hall
3730 Walnut St.
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6340

phone: 215.898.1132
fax: 215.898.2534
faderp@wharton.upenn.edu
http://www.petefader.com