Insights from the Digital Shelf of Indian FMCG Brands

Analyzing Search, Promotions and Availability for Chocolates, Biscuits, and Malt Drinks across BigBasket, Blinkit, Dmart, Swiggy etc.

Imagine you log into an e-commerce portal with a list of food items you need for the month. You know what you want, and scroll through the platform to see if there are any discounts. You check competitor products to see if you can get better deals. And within no time, fill your cart with products that you need and proceed to check out.

It all happens quickly. It’s an online shopping experience that we are familiar with. But what exactly is happening in the background?

Brands are tracking and ensuring the highest keyword ranking, optimal availability and competitive discounts to grab your order. And to enable this, Brands rely on Digital Shelf Analytics.

The FMCG marketplace

Source: NielsenIQ’s FMCG Snapshot for Q2 2022

Here, we take a closer look at some of the key factors that Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) Brands on e-commerce platforms need to pay attention to – to ensure their products appear on the top of search items, to better understand competitor discounts and to monitor the availability of their products across regions.

FMCG has experienced rapid growth in the last two years, largely attributed to digitalization, changing consumer habits, and increased spending post-pandemic. Macro factors, including government impetus, inflationary pressures, and consumption recovery, indicate a double digital growth for FMCG brands in the country. According to NielsenIQ’s FMCG Snapshot for Q2 2022, the FMCG industry has grown by 10.9% in the quarter ending June 2022, compared to 6% in the previous quarter. In the second half of 2022, consumers are expected to spend even more during the festive season. With these shifts underway, the growth opportunities in this sector can only be exploited by companies that can sense trends early – and take appropriate action.

In addition to providing manufacturers and retailers with actionable insights into e-commerce trends, DataWeave’s tools also allow them to make informed business decisions and ultimately improve their bottom line. Data-driven insights on e-commerce products can help brands optimize their supply chain to maximize sales. A company can determine the key areas that need attention based on an analysis of the availability of products on specific e-commerce channels, associated discounts, as well as zip-code level demand and supply statistics.

Here are a few sample insights and trend analyses for some popular FMCG brands in the Biscuits, Chocolate and Malt drinks categories spotted by DataWeave.

Analytics Methodology: An overview of the data set analyzed

Data Scrape period: January 2022 to August 2022
Grocery Retailers tracked: Amazon Fresh, BigBasket, Dmart, Jiomart, Swiggy, Milkbasket
FMCG brands: Britannia, ITC, Mondelez, Nestle, Parle, Complan, Boost, Amul, Hershey’s
Category tracked: Biscuits, Chocolate, Malt drinks

Availability Analysis

What is the availability of Biscuits, Chocolate and Malt Drinks on e-commerce portals?

The availability of a product on an e-commerce marketplace is a key indicator of whether the product meets consumer demands. DataWeave’s availability analytics can be leveraged by FMCG brands to strategize their inventory and stock planning. Brands can also make data-driven decisions on product visibility, i.e. identify which products to prioritize on which platforms.

Biscuits had a better availability at 63% when compared to chocolates at 56% across all retailers
Dmart and Swiggy had more than 85% availability across all three categories, with Bigbasket coming next at 67% availability
Flipkart Grocery and Blinkit had the lowest availability at 46% and 50%, respectively.

Figure 1: Availability Scores for Biscuits, Chocolates and Malt Drinks across Retailers

Which manufacturers have the highest availability of products on e-commerce platforms?

A study of the availability of products across different manufacturers can reveal brands that have successfully tapped the market opportunity. Here’s a look at brands that have steadily improved their availability on e-commerce platforms.

Figure 2: Availability Trends for Biscuits across Manufacturers

In the biscuits category, all five manufacturers marked approximately 50% availability in Jan 2022. Availability steadily grew to 68% in June 2022, then declined to 63% in Aug 2022.
Unibic experienced the largest drop in availability, dropping 15% between May 22 and Aug 22.
Mondelez saw the largest rise in availability, an increase of 23% between Mar-22 and Aug-22.

Figure 3: Availability Trends for Malt Drinks across Manufacturers

Except for Boost and Nestle, availability for all seven manufacturers of malt drinks was consistently above 50%. The average availability across all manufacturers rose gradually from 55% in Jan to 63% in Jul-22, followed by a small decline to 57% in August.
From 30% availability in January 22 to a mere 7% in August 22, Boost has seen the greatest drop in availability.
The availability of Amul has risen the most over the past year, rising from 51% in January 22 to 78% in August 22, hitting 80% in July 22.

Chocolate: Which manufacturers have the highest availability of products on the e-commerce platforms?

Figure 4: Availability Trends for Chocolates across Manufacturers

Chocolate availability across all manufacturers averaged 47% in Jan-22, reaching a peak of 64% in May-22 and dropping to 51% in Aug-22.
From 46% in Jan-22 to 74% in May, Mondelez saw the biggest increase in availability, followed by a decline to 68% in August.
Ferrero experienced one of the sharpest drops in availability. Although the brand’s availability steadily grew from 77% in Jan 22 to 94% in Jul 22., it registered a steep drop to 49% in August.

The drop in availability hurts the Brand’s eCommerce in two ways. Not only does the Brand lose sales directly. But poor availability also impacts the keyword search ranking, which further hurts the sales.

Check out DataWeave’s Digital Shelf Analytics Product for insights on how Availability tracking can help reduce stock-outs and boost sales. Click here to know more.

Discount Analysis

Location-based, retailer-based, and manufacturer-based discount trends can be analyzed. These studies can help companies plan attractive and appropriate promotional and discount strategies to enhance their revenue opportunities.

Which manufacturer has been offering the most discounts?

A study of discounts offered across manufacturers for chocolates, malt drinks and biscuits indicates that some brands have increased their discounts while others have reduced their discount rates. These decisions could be triggered by demand, availability, and production cycle. Parle, for example, has steadily reduced its discount rates.

Figure 5: Discount Rate Trends across Manufacturers

Average discount rates across manufacturers were around 9% in Jan 2022 and rose steadily to reach 14% in Jul 2022. A small decline is observed post-July, with a 12% discount rate registered in Aug 2022.

In the biscuit category, Unibic offered the biggest discount of 28%, followed by ITC at 20%.
In the Chocolate category, Hershey’s offered the largest discount of 14%, followed by ITC at 12%.
In the Malt Drink Category, Amul offered the largest discount of 16%, followed by Boost at about 10%.

Check out DataWeave’s Digital Shelf Analytics Product for insights to respond to Competitor’s pricing and promotions. Click here to know more.

Share of Search Analysis

Which brands feature within the top 5 on the first page of the search?

A product that appears within the top 5 items on the first page of a search, has a higher probability of being purchased. Below is a study of the share of the search for biscuits across manufacturers and retailers.

Figure 6: Share of Search for Biscuits across Manufacturers and Retailers

Britannia dominates the top ten share of search across different online retail platforms.
Mondelez has the highest share of search at 62% in Amazon Fresh, whereas Parle-G has the lowest share of search at 7%.
In Bigbasket, Britannia has the highest search share of 62%, whereas Parle-G has the lowest search share of 7%.

Check out DataWeave’s Digital Shelf Analytics to track the Share of Keyword and Navigation Search. Click here to know more.

Conclusion

FMCG is a rapidly evolving industry sector with a high potential for growth in the coming years. FMCG brands must compete with one another to fully tap this market opportunity on several factors to ensure that their products are visible, available, and attractive to consumers. Digital crawling and big data technologies have enabled manufacturers and retailers to collect publicly available e-commerce data for useful, actionable insights and trend analysis. To stay competitive, it is crucial for manufacturers and retailers to engage with analytics and data experts to seamlessly integrate e-commerce analytics into their short- and long-term business strategies. Whether it’s building keywords to increase the share of search, knowing the right discounts to attract customers in a particular city or increasing the availability of products on specific e-commerce platforms, companies need to invest in the right data intelligence!

DataWeave for FMCG Brands

DataWeave has been working with global CPG/FMCG brands, helping them drive their growth on eCommerce platforms by enabling them to monitor their key metrics, diagnose improvement areas, recommend action, and measure interventions’ impact. DataWeave’s KPIs enable Brands to fill in the blind spots in their funnel data and allows them to respond to competitors on a near-real-time basis.

If you want to know to learn how your brand can leverage DataWeave’s data insights and improve sales, then click here to sign up for a demo