Leading Personal Care Brands Losing Ground to Emerging Ones

The latest Kantar Worldpanel report on personal care products revealed that the leading brands, international players as majority, are losing ground. In the meantime, emerging brands could crack the market along with newly risen channels. In such competition, what should leading brands do?

The Crisis of Leading Brands

The figures from Kantar Worldpanel showed decline in sales across top 6 shampoo brands in the recent years. In 2011, the top 6 accounted for 34% but dropped to 17.8% in Q2 2015. A similar situation was found in mass skincare market: top 4 mass skincare brands declined from 28% in 2011 to 17.5% in Q2 2015.

Source: Kantar Worldpanel TW
Leading shampoo brands: H&S, Pert, Nice, Dove, Lux, Pantene
Leading mass skincare brands: Neutrogena, L’Oréal, Olay, Biore

Natural Professional and Trendy are more attractive

Having more flexibility, these emerging brands come up with innovative ideas when developing new products. For instance, Dr. Formula introduced a transparent package for its shampoo. Amma Garden and GuBao Soapberry also launched organic shampoo, focusing on hair health. Korean brands, such as Elastine, known for its perfume shampoo, and Ryoe, also performed well. As for mass skincare market, derma brands such as Dr. Wu, Avene, Vichy and Curel, targeting sensitive skin with professional images took the ground.

Table 1 – Emerging shampoo brands grew fast in recent years

Source: Kantar Worldpanel TW
Emerging shampoo brands: Dr. Formula, GuBao Soapberry, Giovanni, Amma Garden, Elastine, Ryoe, KA’FEN

Table 2 – Emerging mass skincare brands grew fast in recent years

Source: Kantar Worldpanel TW
Fast Growing Emerging Brands include Dr. Wu, Avene, Vichy, La Roche-Posay, For Beloved One, Curel

Emerging Channels Overtake Traditional Trade

In the past, leading brands took advantage of mass media advertising and well-established distribution network. They were pioneers in the market, possessing plenty of marketing resources and eye-catching displays. However, these big box retailers are losing their grounds to online*, Costco, and beauty specialty stores. Kantar Worldpanel identifies that leading brands weighted much less in online, Costco, and personal care stores than that in supermarkets, hypermarkets and PX mart, indicating that emerging brands are grabbing the share through newly risen channels.

*read more: Accelerating the Growth of E-Commerce in FMCG, 2015 Edition 

Table 3 – Leading brands have big challenges in the emerging channels.

Source: Kantar Worldpanel TW

Social Media Platform Impact

With the increasing use of the internet as a research and communication platform, word-of -mouth has become a powerful and useful resource for consumers and marketers other than TV commercials. For example, on a limited budget, these new or professional emerging brands can still increase product awareness by free trials, customer reviews and ratings online. With the cycle effect, emerging sales channels also grew with the help of these brands.

Make Rich Media and Channel Richer

In response to an increasing threat from emerging brand competition, what should leading brands do when facing brand fatigue? Kantar Worldpanel suggests that it is critical to customize the products and create word-of-mouth, with the solution tailored made for customers’ needs. To reach more buyers, get a lot of publicity on emerging media and expand sales channel coverage are ways of turning the tables.