The adhesive bandage retail shelf was dominated by the top three brands all having higher market share than our client’s premium brand and benefits.
The brand team’s growth strategy was to influence the retail shelf arrangement to better represent its products. To do so, the team devised a two-pronged approach: Communicate the superior benefits of its product at shelf to bandage shoppers, and secondly, demonstrate a deep understanding of the shoppers’ path to purchase to the retailers.
We designed a custom qualitative and quantitative approach that would measure brand awareness, usage, and loyalty, and uncover critical factors that influence the purchase path.
In the first phase, a three-day online bulletin board was created among a broad demographic of bandage shoppers at key mass merchandise retailers. These foundational insights provided the “whys” behind bandage purchases. In addition, bandage users were sent on shopping missions to explore the shelf and shared photos and videos to recap what influenced their purchase decisions.
The second phase consisted of a quantitative study of 600+ bandage users, and measured their awareness and usage across the category. These insights informed the development of new planograms and shelf arrangements.
The research revealed that while the category leader enjoys strong differentiation, our client’s brand exceeds the top three brands on one key benefit—it outperforms in water. These insights gave our client the strategic direction to develop several different shelf plan-o-grams for in-store testing—by brand, a premium section, and a benefit-based organization.
