New products at times of economic hardship
Continuing our theme of new products at times of economic hardship, we look at how true innovations significantly outperform minor innovations at such times. Secondly how category growth is driven by or helps drive the bigger brands. And finally that the rules of growth remained the same in 2020 – share being driven by penetration.
- Innovation always outperforms renovation in terms of share delivered to the brand but the last recession showed that this is especially true in times of hardship. As we are likely to be facing uncertain times, the role of true innovation is critical to growth.
- In categories where the number of buyers increases, the brands that also benefit have a much larger proportion (21.5%) of category buyers compared with brands that don’t benefit (14.1%).
- The pandemic led to lower overall shopping frequency but with record growth, each category featured more often in each basket and brand loyalty dropped. So although penetration remained the key driver, each buyer had to be shared with more competitors.