The Branded Pantry

Despite recent news indicating the pace of new product introductions has shrunk dramatically in the CPG space (-51% first quarter vs. YA, according to Mintel see earlier blog), new products are an important and welcome bright spot in the consumer’s everyday life.  Particularly those that impart some special value to that particular consumer. 

 Some of the beverage manufacturers are bringing to market products that continue to give their consumer a tasty and perhaps enhanced (sports drinks) alternative to water, while at the same time recognizing that times are tough and water is less expensive that some other beverage alternatives, and tap water is free.  To that end some new smaller individual containers of beverages have emerged.  Seems like a pretty good response to the times.  However, even with a reduced current focus on new items, the introductions that ARE being made face the same challenges in “meeting the consumer at the shelf” as always. ShelfSnap tracked a multi item, new size introduction not long ago in the top traditional grocers in a top ten DMA.  Some examples of the inconsistencies:

1. The number one grocery chain, had distribution of some of the new items in EVERY store
2. The number two chain had zero distribution of these new size/flavors.  This means more that 20% of the shoppers in the DMA would not find this new item in their primary shopping location.  In these times, consumers are significantly less likely to shop multiple outlets, which means that this manufacture is starting off with less than 80% of the potential for these items that they might have hoped for.  Further, this means that media and consumer overlays are starting out 20+% less effective than they could have been.
3. The objectives from the manufacturer were to have three facings of each flavor on the top shelf.  In the first chain they hit the top shelf at 100%.  The facing/assortment performance came in at 83%
4. 25% of the stores in the top chain did not have one of the flavors at all, and an additional  25% did not have another flavor.
5. While our service evaluated the pictures of the store conditions on this category we looked at the category OOS as well.  The market leader had 6.2% of their shelf on vacation while number two had 6.7% of their space empty when the consumer was in the store .  But more on OOS in a future newsletter. 

New product introductions will spring back from the slow pace set in the first quarter.  The same old execution miscues will continue to limit their success.