Market research firm The NPD Group has announced its move into the digital gaming world, with a new service which is set to track sales of both premium apps and in-app purchases in the mobile games space.

An extension of Checkout Tracking, a service which provides purchase data directly connected to the customer and their demographics, this new mobile games service will use online receipt data provided by Slice Intelligence.

"Mobile is the third largest gaming category in the U.S., and grew in excess of 20 percent over the past year," said the group's president of Global Games David McQuillan.

"We believe that information that allows gaming companies to fully capitalize on this explosive growth is paramount."

Keeping track

The NPD Group presented some of its new service's findings from the fourth quarter of 2014, showing that - having tracked 325,000 transactions and 1,100 games with IAPs - the average number of items purchased per buyer was 7, and an average spend of $48 per buyer.

Despite this being a newly-announced service, NPD has been accruing this in-app purchasing data for a while, with sales data backed up as far as October 2012.

"The data is collected from large-scale longitudinal panels, enabling the study of consumers over time, the analysis of competitive purchase behavior, and the identification of purchase patterns," said a spokesperson for the firm.

"The Checkout Tracking Service also provides the added benefit of behavioral analytics, including the ability to better understand consumer purchase behaviors and to track key demographic segments, including age, gender, education, ethnicity, and household income."