CPG at CES 2024: Bimbo Bakeries’ and Kimberly-Clark’s Consumer Insights Breakthroughs
Bimbo Bakeries USA is leveraging consumer insights and media data to help shape its direct-store delivery (DSD) and product strategies, and results are paying off via improved fill rates at Walmart.
Kimberly-Clark, meanwhile, is using this information to better identify valuable loyalty opportunities and potential product missteps.
Both companies shared insight into how they’re finding success in using data culled from the Walmart Connect and Luminate data platforms, as well as other technologies, at a Walmart-hosted panel at CES in Las Vegas on Wednesday.
Bimbo Bakeries, which is owned by No. 30 consumer goods company Grupo Bimbo, has 6,500 DSD routes servicing 5,000 Walmart stores daily, said Jeffrey Hendrix, VP sales, Walmart and Sam's Club customer team at Bimbo Bakeries USA. As e-commerce has increased, they’ve focused more heavily on improving inventory visibility within stores, and they’ve equipped DSD drivers with cellular- and Wi-Fi-enabled handhelds to signal deliveries in near real-time.
The technology enables Bimbo to view inventory levels at individual locations, while the data from Walmart’s Luminate insights platform enables Bimbo to differentiate whether in-store purchases were made at registers, during BOPIS, or through home delivery — something it couldn’t do before.
Gather with consumer goods leaders at Analytics Unite 2024 to dig into effective consumer insights strategies. Learn more.
Bimbo can also now determine whether a product was substituted for a competitor’s. Now when their reps enter stores, Hendrix said, they can pull that data up on their tablets and use the information to inform decisions about improving product or merchandising gaps.
As a result of these efforts, Bimbo has improved its fill rates from 88% one year ago to an average of 92-95% for the past 26 weeks, according to Hendrix, who said their target for this year is 98%.
“All of that data helps us become more predictive and less post-analysis. I think that’s critical as that online shopper percentage of volume continues to grow,” he noted. “More shoppers are shopping online without the aided awareness of looking at the shelf to see what’s available. It’s important for us to partner and use the data in a way that meets the need of the demand at the store of the time.”
As the company moves forward, it’s also using the insights to help evolve its post-COVID product strategy. After experiencing a surge in at-home breakfast foods during the pandemic, the company has experienced sales abate in foods like bagels and English muffins, Hendrix said. Now the company is leveraging the data analytics in distribution and predictive volume to implement a rollback on bagel flavors for 90 days.
Kimberly-Clark’s Insights Progress
Kris McDermott, director of omnichannel marketing at Kimberly-Clark, was also on the panel, and she shared how the CPG has leveraged Walmart’s insights to help change the way they go to market in retail locations beyond Walmart.
For example, they learned that not only were half of the buyers for its Depend adult incontinence brand very loyal, but also that a significant number of shoppers had made a purchase once or twice in the last 12 weeks, representing a huge opportunity.
“We went after them more significantly and saw an enormous increase in return there,” said McDermott.
Conversely, Kimberly-Clark was also able to identify the consumers who had purchased something from their competitors five times in the last 12 weeks, indicating it wasn’t worth their efforts to go after these shoppers.
In another example, Kimberly-Clark leveraged data from a switching report after relaunching its Cottonelle brand that helped identify they should revert the changes.
“From that, we were able to extrapolate if something is happening at Walmart, is happening in other places, so we’re now re-assessing some of the packaging choices we made,” she noted.
