Clorox Makes Consumers Category Captains

Oakland, Calif. — Ketchup and mustard on one end, salad dressing on the other — that could be one change in a reset of the condiment aisle in Walmart stores and major supermarkets, following a 2011 shopper study from The Clorox Co. that included aisle intercepts, an online survey and a virtual store test.Clorox will conduct a market test of a redesigned condiment aisle with an undisclosed major retailer within a few months, according to Renu Mevasse, shopper insights lead-food at Clorox.She says the use of virtual technology gave the company the ability to build a merchandising model based on shopper preferences and move it into retail in a short time. The effort challenges the longstanding control of shelves by retailers and their category captains. "Virtual technology was a breakthrough in helping us focus on what the consumer wants and not the goals of retail and manufacturers," Mevasse says."What came out of this is throwing out 100 years of retailer shelves based on supplier relationships," noted Rich Rizzo of Vision Critical, a Chicago-based virtual store developer that conducted the study.The study, a three-phase process conducted during the first five months of 2011, was a cross-functional effort at Clorox that involved the global insights group, brand teams from Hidden Valley Ranch and KC Masterpiece, the sales organization, and the innovation group. The company began sharing results with retailers in June.The first stop on the fact-finding tour was Houston, where Vision Critical did condiment aisle intercepts to learn how the category is shopped. Those learnings helped researchers construct Phase 2, a "Build Your Own Aisle" online survey in which respondents were given blank shelves and 12 condiment product segments to click and drag into place in jigsaw puzzle fashion. The resulting consumer-built aisle became one of five variations for supermarkets and Walmart that were shopped by 1,500 participants in Phase 3 virtual-store situations.The Houston intercepts put the study firmly in the hands of the shoppers. "We didn't want to start out with what would benefit Clorox or retailers, but what would benefit shoppers," says Mevasse. "That's very different from where we've been in the past."Clorox found that most consumers parse condiments into four major groupings: ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise and salad dressing. In the category-building exercise, consumers generally planted two of those product segments, bookend-like, at the ends of their aisles. "The fact that people found salad dressing to be a staple was a big 'a-ha' for us," says Mevasse. "They wanted those four products on the perimeter, and they wanted us to flag them."Clorox food marketers knew going into the study that more than 80% of purchase decisions occurred in-aisle, Mevasse says. Meanwhile, retailers often merchandised salad dressing willy-nilly with placements in prepared food aisles or produce departments. "This study suggested retailers needed to consider salad dressing as a condiment. Ranch and Italian are used on more than just salads," says Mevasse. Among the findings: A condiment aisle planogram featuring salad dressing at one end increased category sales by $2 to $3 per customer.In Vision Critical's virtual shop, video animation placed subjects in a whole-store environment. They were then directed to the condiment aisle and asked to shop as they normally would. Vision Critical captured how much time they spent in the aisle, what products they picked up, what they put back and what they purchased.Results showed the bookended aisle created by consumers in Phase 2 was the clear incremental sales leader from among the five choices. Stationing the key segments at the aisles' ends caused shoppers to walk the entire aisle and consider more secondary items in between."As you look at the way the aisles are currently laid out, you can see which manufacturers have captaincy, and it's not necessarily the shopper-directed flow. That's because we never looked at what the consumer wanted," Mevasse says. "Retailers are very much on board with us on this, because if you're not meeting shopper needs, they're not going to come to the store."And as for the category captains? "This doesn't just benefit Clorox. Increased category activity benefits the Krafts and Heinz's, too," Mevasse says.The study made Mevasse a true believer in the effectiveness of virtual store technology. "We could play around with the shelves in a way we couldn't do in a test with retailers because of the operational expense," Mevasse says. "And the cost of focus groups to do a study like this would have been astronomical."

Clorox Makes Consumers Category Captains

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