Business Hygiene
Profits from a consumer-defined health and wellness positioning
Fast-moving consumer goods | New product development
Situation
In the rapidly changing and competitive market of health care products, our client was seeing stagnating sales of a core product line, oral care for women. To understand the situation and determine a new, differentiating marketing strategy, the company worked with Red Associates to develop insights into consumer body care in the Scandinavian market.
Approach
We looked across Scandinavia to understand women’s relationships to health and beauty culturally regionally, and relative to life stage. The team use a range of ethnographic methods, conducting contextual interviews, visual and word exercises, bathroom cabinet archaeology, in-store shadowing and diary studies.
Outcome
Insight into the target market of Scandinavian women was that most women were choosing health products to support a goal of long-term health and wellness, rather than of simple hygiene or quick fixes. This fundamental shift in attitude had a wide range of effects on daily habits, and had profound implications for product usage and where they chose to shop. The team looked at a shift in positioning from stressing ‘effectiveness’ in a clinical sense to one that borrowed from a more gentle beauty culture, and proposed an investigation into alternate sales channels.
The marketing team worked together with Red to develop positioning, identify the right advertising agencies, advisors and retail outlets. The changes resulted in significant sales increases through existing retailers, and the identification of several new sales channels. The repositioned product is now the highest selling in the firm’s history.
In the rapidly changing and competitive market of health care products, our client was seeing stagnating sales of a core product line, oral care for women. To understand the situation and determine a new, differentiating marketing strategy, the company worked with Red Associates to develop insights into consumer body care in the Scandinavian market.
Approach
We looked across Scandinavia to understand women’s relationships to health and beauty culturally regionally, and relative to life stage. The team use a range of ethnographic methods, conducting contextual interviews, visual and word exercises, bathroom cabinet archaeology, in-store shadowing and diary studies.
Outcome
Insight into the target market of Scandinavian women was that most women were choosing health products to support a goal of long-term health and wellness, rather than of simple hygiene or quick fixes. This fundamental shift in attitude had a wide range of effects on daily habits, and had profound implications for product usage and where they chose to shop. The team looked at a shift in positioning from stressing ‘effectiveness’ in a clinical sense to one that borrowed from a more gentle beauty culture, and proposed an investigation into alternate sales channels.
The marketing team worked together with Red to develop positioning, identify the right advertising agencies, advisors and retail outlets. The changes resulted in significant sales increases through existing retailers, and the identification of several new sales channels. The repositioned product is now the highest selling in the firm’s history.
