Bringing customers back to a category with a reimagined assortment
Kimberly-Clark used Scintilla insights to guide high-performing enhancements to the Facial Tissues assortment and modular flow.
“If you take calculated risks grounded in data, you can gain sustainable growth.”
As the Facial Tissue category declined in sales and relevance, the Category Advisory team from Kimberly-Clark Corporation partnered with the Walmart merchant to investigate the trend and scope solutions.
See how Kimberly-Clark used Scintilla insights to pinpoint gaps in the category’s assortment, respond to changes in the market, and reconnect to customer needs.
The opportunity: Improve household penetration in a stagnating category
Household penetration for the Facial Tissue category had been steadily declining for several years, dropping from a high of 71.4% in 2018 to a low of 65.3% in 2022.
The drop had resulted from a confluence of factors. Tissues are highly substitutable and often compete with products like paper towels and napkins for basket space, which was exacerbated by younger customers regarding them as a lower-priority purchase. COVID-related supply-chain issues further accelerated the drop, leaving the category in need of retooling.
The approach: Bringing new life to an old lineup
Kimberly-Clark prioritized two areas to build momentum in Facial Tissues: carrying products that met the needs of the new market, and optimizing in-store modulars to aid navigation and encourage purchases.
Addressing the assortment
First, Kimberly-Clark used Shopper Behavior Performance in Detail and Customer Perception to examine how different Facial Tissues brands performed with different customer demographics. They found that both the category overall and some of its top brands underperformed with segments like young and Hispanic shoppers, leaving unmet potential within the assortment.
Next was the issue of product substitution. 37% of customers reported that they either substituted tissues or didn’t think about buying them at all. In response, Kimberly-Clark moved to shore up the Facial Tissues assortment with specialty products that were harder to substitute. They also added more options for on-the-go tissues, encouraging basket growth and return visits from busy customers.
Adapting the modular
Scintilla insights also revealed that the existing Facial Tissue modular design was in need of an upgrade. Organized horizontally by tissue variant, it left customers overwhelmed by quantity and underwhelmed by clarity. It made it difficult for customers to find the right products, and did little to encourage upsizing to larger packs.
Kimberly-Clark introduced a vertically oriented modular design to solve both problems. The new modular arranged tissues by pack size, making it easy for shoppers to find the best value or the right quantity, and placed key specialty tissue options in high-profile locations.
The results: New approach helps Facial Tissues reach new heights
Kimberly-Clark's efforts had positive impacts across the board—the category experienced significant gains in unit and dollar sales overall, plus other gains upstream. Those included attracting a younger, more diverse customer base to Facial Tissues with expanded sub-brands, with new items averaging a 23% increase in customer adoption.
Efforts at basket growth through new on-the-go options panned out as well, as the category experienced a 12% increase in new items added to existing baskets. Specialty tissues especially contributed to category growth: 23.6% of their sales were incremental, and 48.2% came from customers new to the category.
