What is Kimberly Clark Lever's investment in retail? Is it possible to break it up in terms of spends on merchandising, retail formats and consumer study?

The diaper industry is at a nascent stage in India but steadily growing and gaining acceptance. As per Nielsen reports, the diaper category is approximately1300 crore, growing at 20% YOY. We at Kimberly-Clark Lever are committed to building the diaper category in India. With this objective we invest optimally across ATL, BTL and retail to reach the consumer with the Huggies proposition & innovations.
 
How often do you change the displays in stores?
 
In the diaper category, the entire consumer base changes every two years, as new moms enter and current users move out. For a message to land with our consumer base, we at Kimberly-Clark Lever believe in giving our displays certain permanence in the stores.  This helps land our core proposition in our consumer's mind as well as ensures minimal disruptions for our partners in retail.
 
While planning an in-store campaign, what are your typical objectives? How much of it is met by merchandising and how much by shopper connect initiatives and activations?
 
At Kimberly-Clark, we work towards executing the marketing campaign across multiple legs - in-store being a key one. The in-store activation of the marketing campaign is developed and delivered with the same objectives as that of the overall campaign.  In our view, merchandising and shopper connect activations work as one system versus separate initiatives to deliver the overall objective.  
 
Any new retail formats that you have looked at recently or are planning? Could you elaborate on the reasons?
 
General trade, Chemists & Modern trade will continue to remain the key channels for us.  At Kimberly-Clark, we see e-commerce emerging as a strong route to reach the consumer.  According to a recent study conducted by the Assocham titled'State of e-commerce in India' 1 out of every 10 Indian is online. India is seen to be the fastest growing market adding over 18 million internet users and growing at an annual rate of 41%. This shows the immense potential that e-commerce holds in India. It is also a channel that enables experimentation and flexibility, while reaching out to Huggies consumers with promotions and specific offerings. We work closely with leading diaper online retailers to understand and be effective in this channel.

What kind of challenges do you face when it comes to planning, designing and executing your merchandising? How do you collaborate with retail solutions providers? Also, do you have some standards for merchandising? What are the other challenges you face?

At a general trade outlet, the consumer has a limited attention span and usually very little time to make the purchase decision. Given that the product display is usually cluttered, it then becomes important for the brand to innovate with design in a way that can garner attention. In any channel, packaging plays a key role. With Huggies, we exercise many design practices that help the product pop out on the shelf, in general trade or otherwise. For example: Huggies packaging colors correspond to the product format or segment, so that its easier for the consumer to narrow down their consideration set based on their specific need versus getting confused between multiple offerings across multiple product segments and formats.

We also sell a 2s pack in string format packaging, which is easy for the retailer to store and display, and very easy for the consumer to spot.  However, it is actually the reverse in case of modern trade. Here, we need to do a lot of customizations and a lot of exclusivity as each retailer is fighting to stand apart. Also, within the modern trade formats there are a lot of segmentation and store classification. All of this needs to be built in from the planning stage itself. Modern trade retailers also have their own visibility cycles. Hence, the entire system needs to be aligned to it.

Any interesting shopper insights or observations you can share?
 
We at Kimberly-Clark Lever are constantly investing in understanding our consumers to be able to deliver innovation and value for our consumers. We have seen that the urban Indian family is undergoing dynamic changes on a social, cultural and lifestyle level. Also, due to the increasing per capita income, this change in attitude in lifestyle has been even more significant.
 
This segment sees a fresh set of consumers every two years and hence this requires us to continue learning about them, their behaviour and their needs and accordingly innovate.
 
At Kimberly-Clark Lever, we recognize shopper insights as a critical input, for an information intensive category such as diapers. We weave in shopper insights into designing our marketing mix, with the strongest influence being on packaging. The manner in which a mother or father shops for a Huggies diaper influences the on pack communication of sizes, age suitability, and even the use of color for packaging.