Shopper Digest: Inside the Pantry

Imagine having the superpower to peek into a shopper’s kitchen pantry, vanity table, or bathroom storage. One family might stock everything from a single brand, another might splurge on premium bath soap but buy the cheapest shaving cream, while others mix and match across competing brands. Each scenario reveals stories of preference, habits, and subtle shifts in loyalty.

For FMCG brands, these stories are often hidden beneath layers of transactional data. Yet within these combinations lie powerful clues: which brands are bought together, who is loyal, and who is quietly exploring alternatives.

So, how does understanding shopper brand mixes help you target shoppers better? Let’s look at a case study.

Case Study: Understanding Shopper Brand Mixes in a Personal Care Category

Brand A is a market leader in Malaysia’s personal care category. The marketing team faced a dilemma: two of its premium offerings, Uno and Duo, catered to distinct functional segments but were performing very differently. Uno had been gaining traction with each innovation launch while Duo, despite being in the market for years, lagged. As the team prepared to launch a pricier, reformulated Duo, they debated their strategy: Should they bundle Duo with a basic range to encourage up-trading, or position it directly against competitors' premium offerings?

To answer this, they consulted Worldpanel by Numerator to analyse the brand mix within the category. Their hypothesis was that premium products are bought by shoppers who already have premium items in their repertoire; most households have one basic and one premium product, and typically two different brands.

They segmented key brands into basic and premium ranges and ran a repertoire analysis. This analysis examines the spectrum of brand combinations shoppers buy.

Key takeaways from the analysis:

• Most shoppers of Brand A’s premium range also use its basic range, rather than competitor brands. This suggests that up-trading from basic users was the most effective strategy.
• Shoppers in this category typically use only one brand, and those who use two brands tend to have two basic-range products. This indicates the need to first attract competitors' shoppers to Brand A’s basic range before targeting them with premium products.

This insight gave the marketing team the confidence to continue bundling Duo with the basic range and focus their communications on encouraging basic-range shoppers to up-trade.

Why does understanding brand mixes change the game?

1. It reveals true shopper behaviour and potential journeys: Repertoire analysis uncovers how shoppers buy across brands and tracks shifts in brand mix over time, revealing changes in preference and loyalty.
2. It sharpens portfolio decisions: This helps manufacturers identify which SKUs to grow, rationalise, or innovate based on how brands interact in the basket.
3. It strengthens in-store campaigns: It enables manufacturers to co-create data-driven solutions with retailers, including targeted promotions, cross-brand bundles, and shelf layouts, that better serve shoppers and drive mutual value.

At Worldpanel by Numerator, we consistently track shopper baskets on a four-weekly basis to understand their choice of category, variants, channel, retailer, pack size, etc. This helps you to build a lens to view the household’s repertoire.

Source:  P6 2025, Malaysia Peninsular Household Panel, Worldpanel by Numerator