Seminar paper from the year 2001 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 1,2 (A+), University of Cooperative Education Mannheim (International Business Admin. and Information Technology), course: Market Research, language: English, abstract: Consumers nowadays spend their money very well directed. This trend of trained buying restraints makes it increasingly hard to track them. Therefore complex panel research is inevitable if one is eager to keep his company in the black numbers. The objective of this seminar paper is, after a generally assertion over panels, to put more profound knowledge about trade panels across to the reader. Therefore a differentiation to other panel forms is primarily necessary, which in the first chapter takes place. Furthermore a rough partitioning of the commercial panel follows in chapter two, since modifications in the assortment width and depth shifted the commercial landscape and the consumer′s shopping behavior and the associated regression of the traditional retail trade lead to a strong diversification of the institutes. In the third chapter deals with the basic elements of the retail panel as well as some associated problems which are more specifically lit up and possible solutions are pointed out. This also includes a closer look at scanning and its connection to retail tracking. Due to the importance of scanning nowadays, I would additionally give a brief overview about actual scanning services. In chapter four my goal is it to give an overview of the 4 dimensions of a panel number to the reader. Since measurable facts & figures tend to grow, I will take a closer look at some special forms of figures regarding trade and electronic trade panel in chapter five. Furthermore it is in my opinion meaningful to point out the international level of presence and comparability of commercial panels in times of the internationalization and globalization, Therefore this topic is explicitly dealt with in chapter six.