Clavis Insight, a provider of online retail store analytics for consumer packaged goods brands, conducted a pre-holiday analysis of the online personal care gift pack and fragrance categories. The Clavis Insight Index ( CI²) shows Burt’s Bees and Guess fragrances are best positioned to win their respective categories in the online channel, based on their online store presence and performance in early November 2014.
Clavis Insight analyzed the online store representation of leading personal care and fragrance brands on six online retailers, based on key performance indicators (KPIs)* critical to driving online purchasing. The KPIs include product availability, image presence, content integrity and overall search rank. These metrics form the basis of the Clavis Insight Index (CI²), a proprietary benchmark of online retail store presence and performance for brands.
The leading brands in both categories had consistently strong performance on product availability, content integrity and overall search rank. In the Personal Care Gift Pack category, Burt’s Bees outperformed its rivals in terms of search to take first place in the CI² ranking. Likewise, Guess scored well in search ranking to better its rivals in the Fragrance category.
“Ensuring that the right products are available for sale, supporting product content is maximized and that search returns against key category terms are optimized are all critical to winning in the fast growing online channel.” said Supriya Chaudhury, CMO, Clavis Insight.
To produce the Clavis Insight Index, product level performance is calculated against the most critical KPIs and aggregated by brand. Results are benchmarked against the average score for the category to produce the Clavis Insight Index score. Brands indexing greater than 100 outperform the category average, while those that score less than 100 underperform relative to category.
Study Scope
For the purpose of this study Clavis Insight analyzed beauty departments across six leading U.S. online retailers: Amazon, Walmart, Target, Drugstore, CVS, and Walgreens. The analysis involved 92 brands and more than 1,000 SKUs in the Personal Care Gift Packs category and 130 brands and more than 5,500 products in the Fragrance category.
The results show the top 20 in each category are clustered tightly together, reflecting the highly competitive and fragmented nature of both categories. In the Personal Care Gift Packs category, premium and niche brands such as Burt’s Bee’s, Clinique, Philosophy and Aveeno edged ahead of the pack. For Fragrances, mainstream brands stood out, with Guess ranked number one (followed closely by Brut, Joop and Katy Perry).
The analysis was conducted with data collected during the first week of November 2014 to assess who was ahead in time for the holidays. Clavis Insight will continue to monitor online store presence and performance for these categories through the holiday period to track any changes that take place in brand rankings.
“The dynamic changes that can and do occur on the online shelf reiterate the importance of continuous monitoring, measurement and correction,” concluded Chaudhury.
The full study is available from Clavis Insight.
*KPI Definition
The Clavis Insight Index ( CI²) is a proprietary benchmark of online retail store presence and performance for brands. The index is calculated from key performance indicators (KPIs) that are critical drivers in the online path-to-purchase, including:
- AVAILABILITY: Is the product in-stock and available for sale?
- IMAGE PRESENCE: Does the online product listing include a key brand image?
- CONTENT INTEGRITY: Is key product information present and correct on product landing pages?
- SEARCH RANK: Can shoppers find your products based on category keywords?
