Regional and category differences

After last week’s look at Innovation (new brands/sub-brands) and Renovation (new variants, sizes, types),
I received several questions about regional and category differences:

1. Compared with 83% of new SKUs globally, renovations not surprisingly dominate everywhere. But there is more innovation competition in Latin America and in less frequent categories.
2. The impact of new products on the total brand doesn’t vary much but again innovations are slightly more important for infrequent categories and brands need to be more innovative here.
3. Clearly innovations out-perform renovations particularly in Western Europe. But this isn’t as clear cut in frequently bought categories where the competitive brand and assortment set is much bigger. So it becomes more difficult to stand out – again a watch out for marketing strategy.