According to GFK sources, the meeting will take place next week in Melbourne. However, JB Hi Fi Marketing Director Scott Browning claims that the Company will not lift the ban on the research Company and that doing business with GFK is a "high risk". 

There is also speculation that one other major retailer is set to follow JB Hi Fi's lead and ban GFK from collecting store sell-in and sell-out data. 

According to Browning, "The information we have is confidential and while we do not mind sharing it with suppliers, we do not want to share it with GFK. You could say that we are moving to the dark side and that suits us because the Australian market is small and we are growing.

"Last year we grew 30 per cent and we do not want tier 2 or 3 competitors getting access to what we see as valuable information. It's high risk dealing with GFK. We are very competitive and it is hard to justify doing business with them," he said.

GFK Retail and Technology is a sector of the GFK Group, one of the top five market research companies worldwide. It says that it is world's leading market researcher tracking Point-of-Sale (POS) data in technical consumer goods and entertainment media markets across retail stores like JB Hi Fi and Harvey Norman.

GFK collects point-of-sale data from the likes of JB Hi Fi in more than 80 countries, including Australia. This forms the basis of its core research. Its StarTrack reporting platform compiles this data and provides retailers, manufacturers and industry executives with comparable market reporting information at both country and international level.

A senior executive in a major competitor to JB Hi Fi said, "We have always been concerned about the level of confidential trading information that we hand over to GFK and the decision by JB Hi Fi has prompted us to consider going the same way.  This is an important decision which will have to go to a board meeting before we make a final decision. We have spoken to several of our trading partners about the situation as they are watching the situation closely," she said.

The executive said that they had not yet spoken to GFK about their concerns.

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