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A BEVY OF ‘BETTER’ PRODUCTS Better-for-you and functional product development is highlighting the need for a review of the traditional beverage category and store layouts. TBy Exceedra APAC Sales Director Simon Elsby. he beverage category didn’t dual located in both chiller and shelf, stand still during the pandemic, for instance. However, the chiller is with a raft of emerging typically for single products and the shelf and new products and becomes about multipacks. Space to subcategories throwing the spotlight on sales by subcategory will become pivotal the need for tightly controlled category management to ensure the shopping experience remains simple. It’s not just kombuchas and seltzers eating into the traditional beverage shelf space. No-alcohol products, of which 24 are listed by Woolworths online, continue to proliferate. Admittedly, no-alcohol beer isn’t entirely new, given Coopers Ultra Light Birell is 30 years young, but even that attracted nearly six per cent growth in 2020, backing up a previous nine years of double-digit growth.1 And it has been joined on supermarket shelves by a slew of no-alcohol wines and spirits, including Seedlip, as well as other no-alcohol beers such as Carlton Zero and even pale ales such as those of Hawkesbury Brewing Co. The accelerating consumer shift to health consciousness including alcohol moderation, compounded by pandemic-driven demand for products fulfilling immunity, stress relief and mood enhancement need states, means that new beverage product development is likely to continue apace. Sixty per cent of consumers are increasingly looking for food and beverage options that support immune health, according to Innova.2 Category management of beverages will need continually to be reviewed to ensure product proliferation doesn’t create chaos for the shopper. As the beverage category matures beyond segmentation by ingredient or flavour into need states, some subcategories may need to be subsegmented, and shelf stripping and point of sale materials beyond new wobblers and aisle fins devised, to call out functional and better- for-you products. The space for all these new functional and better-for-you products has to come from somewhere. This begs the question of the role of the chiller versus the shelf, and where shoppers expect to find categories. Kombucha has been for understanding which subcategories’ space should be downweighted to face up the emerging and growing categories. I can foresee a world where carbonated soft drinks, long life juice and bulk pack water, for instance, are downsized to free up space for better-for-you beverages. It also begs the question of aisle flow. Theoretically, a flow from ‘best for you’ to ‘least best for you’ could work. However, how this would play out if a category or manufacturer has both better-for-you and not-so-good- for-you SKUs isn’t clear. And some manufacturers may baulk at their brands being cast as the category ‘sinners’. Despite the potential space management headaches, some good- news category stories have emerged with the growth of better-for-you and functional beverages. One is around average weight of purchase (AWOP) as consumer familiarity with new category segments increases, and assuming that these types of beverages have expandable consumption (that is, buying more means consuming more – in this case because the category segments are close to guilt free). Continued consumer working from home at least several days per week means that bulk buying is likely to continue for some time, and while perhaps at more muted levels than in 2020, this is still good news for AWOP-based promotions. The chiller could be better utilised to promote single pack purchase for trial, supported with bulk trialling programs, the better to run AWOP-based promotions around multipacks. Another is around price. Beyond a reasonable single pack price for trial purposes (shoppers are usually unlikely to buy multipacks of something they haven’t tried, unless it’s deeply discounted), these newer beverage categories aren’t commoditised and so don’t require low price points or EDLP strategies. Everyday pricing, rather than high/low promotions, may be the go. Likewise, there may be an opportunity to trade shoppers up to more premium, or at least more premium priced, products by ranging the premium ones, rather than the category best sellers, on eye-level shelves. Lastly, and tactically, there’s an opportunity to tap into the traditional winter cold and flu season with functional beverages that have immunity benefits. Promotional programs should be reviewed to optimise seasonal peaks. All in all, the growth of better-for-you and functional beverages has breathed new life into a category that, until 2018, hadn’t really seen the introduction a new product segment for 10 years. The ways the beverage category has traditionally been managed are now ripe for review with fresh eyes. References are available on request. THE BEVERAGE GUIDE About Simon Elsby and Exceedra Simon is Sales Director APAC at trade promotions specialist Exceedra. He has more than 25 years’ experience in shopper and category strategy, revenue management, and organisational performance and capability building, working with global manufacturers across Asia Pacific. Contact Simon at simon.elsby@exceedra.com. About Exceedra Exceedra is a leading, pure-play consumer goods solution provider with a breadth and depth of solutions to continuously drive business value for any consumer goods company no matter their size, maturity, route to market, category or geographic location. Exceedra’s singular focus, broad solutions offering and partnership culture equip customers with smarter sales and distribution capabilities that improve agility, increase efficiency, enable better decisions and increase profitability. JUN, 2021 RETAIL WORLD 33