Recently I had the opportunity to work with a leading oral care company in India. Having been in this field for more than 75 years, they are the established leaders in the field. The product portfolio of the oral care category of the company primarily consists of some of the most popular toothbrushes and toothpastes sold in the country. I was working on their toothbrush subcategory, and one of my assignments was to figure out the extent of brand awareness and loyalty shoppers exhibit when they purchase a toothbrush.
I carried out shopper intercept studies across various retail environments, and came out with some interesting insights. In India, people generally tend to lay much more emphasis on the toothpaste they use rather than the toothbrush they use. While purchasing toothpaste, a shopper is generally sure of what kind of toothpaste she is looking for. This leads to a significant (if not very strong) brand loyalty. A shopper knows that she wants, say, something like a toothpaste which has cooling crystals, gives fresh breath and may be a herbal one. People even go to the extent of associating freshness of breath provided by a tooth paste with its transparency. They tend to identify themselves with the characters in the toothpaste advertisements they watch on TV. This makes their choice of toothpaste satisfy not only their utilitarian needs but also the hedonistic needs.
In contrast, the conventionally agreed upon approach of the tooth brush shopper is that she exhibits little brand loyalty and most of the times it is more of pick-whatever-is-available kind of purchase resulting in the toothbrushes being categorized more of in the commodity segment. Also, the conventional belief among marketers is that while purchasing a toothbrush a shopper ends up experimenting a lot more often. They often feel that last time I used this particular toothbrush, so this time let me use another one. But I did have a slightly different opinion after my research. Typically, Indian shoppers tend to be more particular about the price point or the price segment into which a tooth brush falls. But given a choice between comparables in the same price segment, shoppers do exhibit a brand preference. For example, one of the conclusions that I could derive from my intercept studies was that more than 70% of the shoppers responded as being brand conscious while purchasing a tooth brush, which was vindicated by a close observation of their purchase decision in the retail environment .It revealed that unconsciously the shopper was more pre-disposed towards some particular brand. This was much more evident in urban areas where the shopper is more informed. Surprisingly, it also came out from my studies that shoppers are generally indifferent towards the features in the toothbrush, because they feel that despite every company claiming that their bristle shape or handle design is superior, their perception is that they are all the same. In fact, the color and appearance of the toothbrush played a bigger role in driving the purchase decision than the features.
This definitely gives us an understanding of the consumer behavior. The shopper feels that the features (which at least theoretically are more important to satisfy the utilitarian needs) takes a back seat while making a purchase decision and the color and appearance of the toothbrush are among the prime determinants of the purchase. Brand consciousness, which earlier was only for tooth pastes, has crept in the minds of tooth brush shoppers also and no longer can a company afford to treat it as a commodity. In fact this has happened with a leading FMCG multinational, which despite repeated cues continued to regard tooth brushes as a commodity, probably because it has a huge product portfolio to take care of, and has lost market share consistently in the tooth brush sub category for the last 2-3 years. There is definitely a need and opportunity for the marketer to influence the tooth brush purchase decision of the shopper - either through media promotions or through in store execution like POP material or visibility aids, which may drive an impulse recall of an existing need or at least create an awareness about the brand in the minds of the shopper.
I carried out shopper intercept studies across various retail environments, and came out with some interesting insights. In India, people generally tend to lay much more emphasis on the toothpaste they use rather than the toothbrush they use. While purchasing toothpaste, a shopper is generally sure of what kind of toothpaste she is looking for. This leads to a significant (if not very strong) brand loyalty. A shopper knows that she wants, say, something like a toothpaste which has cooling crystals, gives fresh breath and may be a herbal one. People even go to the extent of associating freshness of breath provided by a tooth paste with its transparency. They tend to identify themselves with the characters in the toothpaste advertisements they watch on TV. This makes their choice of toothpaste satisfy not only their utilitarian needs but also the hedonistic needs.
In contrast, the conventionally agreed upon approach of the tooth brush shopper is that she exhibits little brand loyalty and most of the times it is more of pick-whatever-is-available kind of purchase resulting in the toothbrushes being categorized more of in the commodity segment. Also, the conventional belief among marketers is that while purchasing a toothbrush a shopper ends up experimenting a lot more often. They often feel that last time I used this particular toothbrush, so this time let me use another one. But I did have a slightly different opinion after my research. Typically, Indian shoppers tend to be more particular about the price point or the price segment into which a tooth brush falls. But given a choice between comparables in the same price segment, shoppers do exhibit a brand preference. For example, one of the conclusions that I could derive from my intercept studies was that more than 70% of the shoppers responded as being brand conscious while purchasing a tooth brush, which was vindicated by a close observation of their purchase decision in the retail environment .It revealed that unconsciously the shopper was more pre-disposed towards some particular brand. This was much more evident in urban areas where the shopper is more informed. Surprisingly, it also came out from my studies that shoppers are generally indifferent towards the features in the toothbrush, because they feel that despite every company claiming that their bristle shape or handle design is superior, their perception is that they are all the same. In fact, the color and appearance of the toothbrush played a bigger role in driving the purchase decision than the features.
This definitely gives us an understanding of the consumer behavior. The shopper feels that the features (which at least theoretically are more important to satisfy the utilitarian needs) takes a back seat while making a purchase decision and the color and appearance of the toothbrush are among the prime determinants of the purchase. Brand consciousness, which earlier was only for tooth pastes, has crept in the minds of tooth brush shoppers also and no longer can a company afford to treat it as a commodity. In fact this has happened with a leading FMCG multinational, which despite repeated cues continued to regard tooth brushes as a commodity, probably because it has a huge product portfolio to take care of, and has lost market share consistently in the tooth brush sub category for the last 2-3 years. There is definitely a need and opportunity for the marketer to influence the tooth brush purchase decision of the shopper - either through media promotions or through in store execution like POP material or visibility aids, which may drive an impulse recall of an existing need or at least create an awareness about the brand in the minds of the shopper.
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