What makes Oral Care and Personal Care unique for retailers?
Shoppers heavily rely on promotions
We see a heavy reliance on promotions and shoppers certainly notice it! 30% of shoppers claim to buy on promotions in the Oral Care, Personal Care and Toiletries department. The store average (across 165 FMCG categories) is only 23%.
Despite this promotional awareness, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the promotion will help bring shoppers to store, effectively driving traffic. 16% of shoppers in this department agree that ‘promotion will encourage me to go shopping at RETAILER’, which is significantly more than the store average, 11%. However, in Oral Care specifically, only net 7% of shoppers feel that promotions attract them to the store.
So, strategies should be adjusted to reflect this, making sure that we use the right parts of the department to talk to shoppers before the store to encourage the visit.
Big brands dominate for shoppers
Unsurprisingly, brand also plays a big role in the Oral Care, Personal Care and Toiletries category. More than half of shoppers (54%) ‘plan to buy a specific brand’ when they shop the category, significantly more than the store average (31%). So, ensuring that the right choice of brands is readily available and easy to find will go a long way to keeping shoppers happy.
This also poses a challenge for new brands entering the category as shoppers tend to be very brand loyal. 76% of Oral Care, Personal Care and Toiletries shoppers will ‘usually stick to brands they’re familiar with’ instead of exploring new options. On average across the store, this sits at 62% of shoppers. Standout and a clear reason for being will need to be clearly communicated for new brand NPD to find success.
Find more category analysis on our blog (for example Home Baking and Dairy). Interested in other shopper insights? Look around in our Resources section! Got questions about your categories? Contact us to speak to an expert.
Being a Category Manager is not easy, and you might feel some limits in moving up within your organization. Read our blog post “As a Category Manager are you the next CEO or stuck for life?”.
All data in this blog post by Shopper Intelligence UK. Online survey of n=34,700 UK shoppers in all UK multiples in June-September 2020.
