We researched the customer decision journey for feminine hygiene products. It allowed the biggest drogerie retailer to grow same-store category sales by 30% in 3 months.
The Challenge
EVA is a drogerie retailer with 1000+ brick-and-mortar stores. To maximize its margin, EVA introduces its private label products (PLs) in most categories.
EVA replaces entry-price products of famous brands with the same quality PLs. They did the same for hygiene pads.
A few years later, the hygiene pads category was stagnating. We noticed that half of the female customers didn’t buy pads at all, with no solid reason for that.
Eva even planned to launch a massive TV campaign to promote the lowest price of its PL hygiene pads to attract more customers to the category.
Lanka.CX conducted the design sprint to identify growth opportunities for the category.
Key insights
Hygiene pads are a necessity. Everybody prefers to spend less on such products. Yet, the risk of low quality of unfamiliar brands far exceeds the benefit of lower price.
Therefore, the majority of women prefer to buy inexpensive yet familiar brand.
If the client does not find a familiar brand on the shelf, she would try to find it in another store or buy the smallest pack of the most expensive product. The price signals the quality.
It became apparent that by removing the popular brand from the shelves, EVA pushed many customers to buy pads in other stores, e.g., supermarkets.
The team
Lanka ran the project as a bootcamp: the EVA team was learning how to apply service design to everyday business challenges.
It was essential to have people from all relevant functions in the same team: category manager, sales, marketing, customer experience, and CRM.
Lanka’s role was to explain the tools and facilitate the process of research, synthesis, ideation, and prototyping. The whole process took only three working days.
The Outcome
The category manager re-introduced a poplar brand of pads to the chain
The category of pads grew +30% in three month
EVA saved its marketing budget by canceling the TV campaign for PL
The category manager decided to re-launch a private label product as a premium-quality product instead of low price alternative
EVA stated to practice service design to boost sales of other categories and PL products
Field experiment
Lanka introduced a fast-prototyping approach to the team
The team experimented at one specific store
The team added the popular brand of hygiene pads to the assortment in this particular store.
A private label product and a popular brand were put side by side
Attractive prices were set for both, the most attractive for private label
Teams observed customers’ actions and interviewed those who bought pads from any of two baskets
After 3 hours of experiment, popular brand vs. private label sales were 19:2
The interviews revealed that the customers who have purchased a popular brand used to buy it in other shops since it was not available at EVA
The experiment validated the insights and helped the team reprioritize the category action plan
Contact us if you need to boost your product or category sales in retail!