Case History

Cleaning Supplies Segmentation

Market Segmentation for a CPG company

Summary

A national manufacturer of cleaning products identified a category repositioning strategy and new product opportunities to help it address some of the key reasons their category was in decline.

Strategic Issues

Our client was experiencing declining sales both within their portfolio of brands and the category as a whole. Leadership needed a strategy to reverse the trend. An important piece of the puzzle was to better understand core users and identify ways to better serve them.

Research Objectives

Specific research objectives were to:

  • Discover behaviors and specific use cases.
  • Understand category and brand usage and more fully identify the competitive set.
  • Understand rational and emotional drivers of category usage.
  • Identify user segments to better serve them.

Research Design and Methods

A multi-phase approach was leveraged for discovery, deeper understanding, and developing move-forward plans.

  • Virtual ethnography and in-person interviews (IDIs) to explore laundry behaviors and the rational and emotional motivators behind them. Discovery of specific activities, processes, and workarounds when using the products.
  • Robust survey of category landscape, product usage, lifestyle, and psychographics to segment the market.
  • In-person activation workshop to internalize segments, develop plans to better serve them, and assign move forward-tasks

Results

The research led to a discovery of the key motivations for using the client’s products, which turned out to be both functional and deeply emotional. It also led to a better understanding of barriers to usage and the associated occasions. With this knowledge the client was able to take two types of actions.

  • The category was dated and needed to be repositioned. The research led to a refreshed positioning and improved communications of features and benefits.
  • New products were developed to address the barriers and serve new usage occasions.

Marketing Research Services

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